midnights
In the enclosed garden among spring flowers children were still playing . Scattered here and there , under the thin shade of blossoming trees , he caught glimpses of white prams with their attendant nurses . The little houses -- his own among them -- stood all a-row , shoulder to shoulder , looking intensely smiling and habitable . His imagination reconjured all the midnights they had witnessed -- the home-comings under cover of darkness , the secret endearments of lovers , the muffled laughter . Then he remembered his own dream , which he had planned to share with her . It was intolerable that it should escape conversion into reality . It seemed little short of marvelous that she should still sit beside him .