not contend with these deepening regrets; and as fast as he threw
down the material obstacles to their happiness Pauline saw them
maddeningly rise again in the path before them, visible shapes of ill
omen, grotesquely irrepressible. Guy used to asseverate that when Spring
was really come she would lose all these morbid fancies, and with his
perpetual ascription to wintry gloom of all the presentiments of woe
that flocked round their intercourse, Pauline did begin to fancy that
when the trees were green he and she would rejoice as of old in their
love. The knowledge that Spring could not linger always was the only
consoling certainty she now possessed, and from the window-seat she
greeted with a passionate welcome each dusky azure minute that on these
lengthening eves was robbed from night. The blackbirds sang to her now
more personally, these somber-suited heralds who had never before seemed
to proclaim so audaciously masterful Spring; and when the young moon
cowered among the ragged clouds of a rainy golden sky and the last bird
slipped like a shadow into the rhododendrons, such airs and whispers of
April would steal through the open window. Every day, too, there were
flowery tokens of hope and in sheltered corners of the garden the
primroses came out one by one, an imperceptible assemblage like the
birth of stars in the luminous green west. This gray-eyed virginal month
had now such memories of the last progress it made through her life that
Pauline could not help imputing to the season a sentimental
participation in her life; there was a poignancy in the reopening of
those blue Greek anemones which Guy, a year ago, had likened to her
eyes, a poignancy that might have been present if the flowers had been
consciously reminding her of vanished delights. Yet it was unreasonable
to encourage such an emotion; or did she indeed, as sometimes was
half-whispered to her inmost soul, regret the slightest bit everything
since that day of the anemones?

It was one evening toward the end of the months that Monica joined her
and walked up and down the edge of the lawn where in the grass a drift
of purple crocuses had lately been flaming for her solitary adoration.

"In a way," said Pauline, "they are my favorite flowers of all. I don't
think there is any thrill quite like the first crocus bud. It seems to
me that as far as I can look back, oh, Monica, ever so far, that always
the moment I've seen my crocuses budding Winter seems to