Part 11

Everybody turned round as the young man entered. The candles on the olive tree shed their light upon him. All but the blind painter looked into his eyes. Each saw the thing in them that he wanted most. Marian and Gwendolen and Cuthbert and Doris, not wanting anything in particular, only saw vaguely all that they hoped to be when they should have become grown-up men and women. So did Edward and so did Pepita; but Christopher Mark saw a celestial rabbit; and Percy and Agnes, holding each other's hand, saw the darlingest of babies. What Beardy Ned saw you can guess, and what Lord Barrington saw was Truth; and the blind painter heard the angels singing the song that explains every other song.

Then the young man stooped for a moment over the little olive-tree.

"Make them happy," he said, and then he was gone; and though nobody saw them, of course, the guardian angels came and stood again in their accustomed places. Marian turned impulsively to Lord Barrington.

"Oh, who was he?" she said. "Tell me his name."

Lord Barrington kissed her.

"The loveliest present," he said, "that ever hung upon a tree."