he sand and saw before her
the winding ways disappearing into dimness between the rills edged by
the pink geraniums.

How long ago that seemed, like a remembrance of early childhood in the
heart of one who is old.

Now that the gate was open she resolved to go into the garden. She might
as well be there as elsewhere. She stepped in, holding the rose in her
hand. One of the drops of water slipped from an outer petal and fell
upon the sand. She thought of it as a tear. The rose was weeping, but
her eyes were dry. She touched the rose with her lips.

To-day the garden was like a stranger to her, but a stranger with whom
she had once--long, long ago--been intimate, whom she had trusted, and
by whom she had been betrayed. She looked at it and knew that she had
thought it beautiful and loved it. From its recesses had come to her
troops of dreams. The leaves of its trees had touched her as with tender
hands. The waters of its rills had whispered to her of the hidden things
that lie in the breast of joy. The golden rays that played through its
scented alleys had played, too, through the shadows of her heart, making
a warmth and light there that seemed to come from heaven. She knew this
as one knows of the apparent humanity that greeted one's own humanity in
the friend who is a friend no longer, and she sickened at it as at the
thought of remembered intimacy with one proved treacherous. There seemed
to her nothing ridiculous in this personification of the garden, as
there had formerly seemed to her nothing ridiculous in her thought of
the desert as a being; but the fact that she did thus instinctively
personify the nature that surrounded her gave to the garden in her eyes
an aspect that was hostile and even threatening, as if she faced a love
now changed to hate, a cold and inimical watchfulness that knew too much
about her, to which she had once told all her happy secrets and murmured
all her hopes. She did not hate the garden, but she felt as if she
feared it. The movements of its leaves conveyed to her uneasiness. The
hidden places, which once had been to her retreats peopled with tranquil
blessings, were now become ambushes in which lay lurking enemies.

Yet she did not leave it, for to-day something seemed to tell her that
it was meant that she should suffer, and she bowed in spirit to the
decree.

She went on slowly till she reached the _fumoir_. She entered it and sat
down.

She had not seen any of the gardeners or