And as he went alone to meet his sister he prayed earnestly that he might be given the right word to say to her.
A ray of sunlight, faint as an echo, stole through the lingering mist, parting it on either hand, and fell on Hester.
Hester, standing in a white gown under the veiled trees in a glade of silver and trembling opal, which surely mortal foot had never trod, seemed infinitely removed from him.

Dimly he felt that she was at one with this mysterious morning world, and that he, the owner, was an alien and a trespasser in his own garden.
But a glimpse of his cucumber-frames in the background reassured him.

He advanced with a firmer step, as one among allies.
Hester did not hear him.
She was gazing with an absorption that shut out all other sights and sounds at the solitary blossom on the magnolia-tree.

Yesterday it had been a bud; but to-day the great almond-white petals which guarded it, overlapping each other so jealously, had opened wide, and the perfect flower, keeping nothing back, had laid bare all its pure white soul before its God.
As Mr.Gresley stopped beside her, Hester turned her little pinched, ravaged face towards him and smiled.

Something of the passionate self-surrender of the flower was reflected in her eyes.
"Dear Hester," he said, seeing only the wan, drawn face.