66 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



never take ft as a matter of course to pass, to be con- 

 tinually surrounded by, thousands of whom he knew 

 nothing, to whom he was nothing. Well did they keep 

 their secrets, this blank or shamefaced crowd of discreetly 

 dressed people who might be anywhere to-morrow. 



He turned from them to his garden and cherry-tree, 

 and thinking of those who had walked there, and in the 

 long garden on the other side of the fence, he felt at 

 home again, with his cat and her long line of descend- 

 ants. That long garden had survived the big house to 

 which it had belonged. A merchant had lived there with 

 his family of four daughters, dark, tall women, whose 

 ;. pride and tender speech the old trees in their garden often 

 recalled. All were beautiful, and they were most beauti- 

 ful together. They walked, they rode, they played and 

 read in the garden, and the old man could see them there. 

 They were said to be clever and their father was wealthy. 

 They were nearly always together, and as often as possible 

 with him. They were a tribe apart, of extraordinary 

 perfection of strength and grace, holding their own 

 against the world. And yet, as the old man thought to 

 himself, looking at their garden in the rain, not one of 

 them was ever married. They had moved right into 

 London after selling their house and land. They had 

 come to his shop once or twice after and made an excuse 

 for going into the garden : they looked into their 

 own as if they had lost something there. Thinking of 

 them he went into his shop and opened a book. A 

 minute black insect, disturbed from among the leaves, 

 crawled over and over the white page as he pretended to 

 read; it went in zigzags half-an-inch long, lost in the 



