seven in the evening
Gertrude had walked on before , until she came to an alley closed by a door . She opened it , and let her mistress pass . Bussy followed , and the two others disappeared . It was half-past seven in the evening , and near the beginning of May ; the air began to have the feeling of spring , and the leaves were beginning to unfold themselves . Bussy looked round him , and found himself in a little garden fifty feet square , surrounded by high walls covered with vines and moss . The first lilacs which had begun to open in the morning sun sent out their sweet emanations , and the young man felt tempted to think that so much perfume and warmth and life came to him only from the presence of the woman he loved so tenderly . On a little wooden bench sat Diana , twisting in her fingers a sprig of wall-flower , which she had picked , without knowing what she did .