She used to like sitting here and listening to it . Alec lived a long while after , but he never married again . He 's gone now , and nobody remembers Mercedes but me . '' Abel lapsed into a reverie -- a tryst with the past which I would not disturb . I thought he did not notice my departure , but as I opened the gate he stood up and waved his hand . Three days later I went again to the old garden by the harbour shore . There was a red light on a distant sail . In the far west a sunset city was built around a great deep harbour of twilight . Palaces were there and bannered towers of crimson and gold . The air was full of music ; there was one music of the wind and another of the waves , and still another of the distant bell from the chapel near which Mercedes slept . The garden was full of ripe odours and warm colours . The Lombardies around it were tall and sombre like the priestly forms of some mystic band . Abel was sitting in the hop-vine arbour ; beside him Captain Kidd slept . I thought Abel was asleep , too ; his head leaned against the trellis and his eyes were shut . But when I reached the arbour I saw that he was not asleep . There was a strange , wise little smile on his lips as if he had attained to the ultimate wisdom and were laughing in no unkindly fashion at our old blind suppositions and perplexities . Abel had gone on his Great Adventure . Akin To Love David Hartley had dropped in to pay a neighbourly call on Josephine Elliott . It was well along in the afternoon , and outside , in the clear crispness of a Canadian winter , the long blue shadows from the tall firs behind the house were falling over the snow . It was a frosty day , and all the windows of every room where there was no fire were covered with silver palms .
But the big , bright kitchen was warm and cosy , and somehow seemed XXXXX David more tempting than ever before , and that is saying a good deal .
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