Chapter IV: New Loves for Old (5)

But the way I should like best, and I think that it might appeal to Miranda, too, would be for me to deliver them myself at the address of a certain oak tree in a certain unforgotten woodland, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” I have already found for them a beautiful coffin, a little carved chest in which a long-dead queen of Arabia kept the sweet smelling essences and unguents of her beauty. The box is fragrant yet with memories of her rose-petal face. In this box I will place Miranda’s letters, and there will still be room enough left for mine.

Then, if Miranda will consent, I will meet her in that woodland at the rising of the moon, and, if she will bring with her my letters, we will place them in the same box with hers, and then I will dig a grave beneath the oak tree, and in it we will place the box together and cover it over with the fragrant summer mould, and leaves, and blossoms, and tears; and we will go our way, she through one green gate of the wood and I through another.

And great Nature, who gave us our dream, will thus take it back into her bosom; and Miranda’s lovely thoughts will blossom again in anemone and violet, and out of that grave of beautiful words, as spring follows spring, two young oak trees will grow, inextricably entwined in root and branch, and there the birds will sing more sweetly than in any other part of the wood, and there the silence will be like the silence of a temple, and to those who sit and listen there will come soothing messages of the spirit out of the stillness.