“I do,” she answered almost with a sob in her throat, “but if you make them open the door and take you in like that it will never be a secret again.”

He leaned still farther forward.

“A secret,” he said. “What do you mean? Tell me.”

Mary’s words almost tumbled over one another.

“You see⁠—you see,” she panted, “if no one knows but ourselves⁠—if there was a door, hidden somewhere under the ivy⁠—if there was⁠—and we could find it; and if we could slip through it together and shut it behind us, and no one knew anyone was inside and we called it our garden and pretended that⁠—that we were missel thrushes and it was our nest, and if we played there almost every day and dug and planted seeds and made it all come alive⁠—”

“Is it dead?” he interrupted her.

“It soon will be if no one cares for it,” she went on. “The bulbs will live but the roses⁠—”