dy, fragrant cup of the mystic wine of life, abounding in
sweet allurements of which she knew not the smallest meaning.

"I would have another tale!" she said at length, imperiously, and raised
her head to look at him in grieved surprise that her command should be
so slighted. But Nicanor drew her back to him, lifting both her cool
palms to his burning face.

"Ah, lady mine!" he said, "the only tale I have to tell thee, I may not
utter. None other have I to-night; my heart is big with it, my brain
reels with it, but my lips must e'en be dumb. And yet--I know that thou
wouldst listen; that what I might say would echo in thy heart forever
and a day. Then why should I not say it? Why, if the thorns be not
strong enough to guard, should I not pluck the rose?"

He gathered her more closely into his arms, drinking the perfume of her
hair, the warmth of her, into every fibre of his being. She lay quiet,
her head thrown back against his shoulder, great eyes wide open in the
darkness, resting easily as a bird in its nest against his strength.

"Because the rose is too fair and fragrant for common hands to pluck."
Nicanor's voice grew to a hushed intensity, as though he argued with
himself a point gone over many times before, yet never wholly
gained--what higher manhood there was in him contending with temptation
innocently offered, striving against lawless passion and desire. "Now it
is but a half-blown bud, this rose, knowing nothing of the perils which
beset all roses in all gardens, lady mine, hiding the golden heart of it
in shy, half-open leaves. Some day a high-born stranger will enter the
garden, and the gardener will point to this his rose, and say: 'Look
you, friend, at the fair flower I have nurtured here. I have tended it
well, kept from it frost and blasting heat, watered it, let the sun to
shine upon it. Now it is ready for the plucking--take you it.' Then the
stranger will pluck the rose, and will watch it unfold, petal by petal,
until all the beauty of it is laid bare. And gardener nor stranger will
ever know that one was in the garden there before them, with his hand
upon the rose's stem and his breath upon the rose's heart."

Varia stirred and brushed a hand across his lips.

"But that is not a tale!" she said plaintively. "Or if it be a tale, it
is a sad one. The poor rose! It may be that it wished to stay within the
garden, and not be plucked to fade away and die. I had not thought of
that before! Never w