There are places in this world, beautiful places, too dangerous for people with unsettled minds. Jon Jameson needs a refuge and believes that he has found one. He's bought a cottage, a retreat nestled in the woods where he feels safe and where he can rest. It lies at the bottom of an immense garden, an extension of the mansion to the north. Jon has visited the mansion, wandered the garden paths, watched the skaters on the pond and spent hours with the young woman he met there. He would be in Heaven, except that the mansion is a ruin, the garden hasn't existed for decades and the woman he's fallen in love with was murdered a century ago.