; the easy tears which
rose to her sisters' eyes in response to any emotion, pleasurable or the
reverse, these were not for her. Looking back over the history of their
lives, Pixie could count the number of times when she had seen Joan cry.
The outside world vanished from her memory in response to that appeal.

"Esmeralda! _Darling_! You are not ill? You are not really
suffering?"

Joan shook her head.

"Quite strong," she murmured miserably; "too strong. Only it seems
impossible to live on in such misery. It's gone--the mainspring,
everything! I can't drag along! Thank God, Pixie, you are here! I
never could bottle up my feelings. It's Geoffrey--he doesn't love me
any more. I'm not imagining it--it's true! He told me himself."

"What did he say?" demanded Pixie practically. She displayed no dismay
at the announcement, being used to her sister's exaggerations, and
feeling abundantly convinced in her own mind that this was but another
example. Geoffrey was cross this morning, but five days' residence
under his roof had abundantly demonstrated that his love was not dead.
"Now, what exactly _did_ he say?" she repeated, and Joan faltered out
the dread words.

There was silence in the room for a long minute. Then Pixie drew in her
breath with a sharp intake. "The _bloom_!" she repeated softly. "The
_bloom_!" The beautiful significance of the term seemed to occupy her
mind to the exclusion of the personal application. She had a vision of
love as the apotheosis of human affection, a wondrous combination of
kindliness, sympathy, courtesy, patience, unselfishness--all these, _and
something more_--that mysterious, intangible quality which Geoffrey
Hilliard had so aptly described. Given "the bloom," affection became
idealised, patience a joy, and selfishness ceased to exist, since the
well-being of another was preferred before one's own; courtesy and
sympathy followed automatically, as attendant spirits who could not be
separated. Affection might exist, did often exist, in churlish,
unlovely form, giving little happiness either to the giver or the
recipient Love, the highest, was something infinitely precious, a
treasure to be guarded with infinite care, lest in the stress of life
its bloom should be destroyed.

Joan, looking with anxious inquiry in her sister's face, read there an
earnestness even exceeding her own.

"Oh, _no_!" cried Pixie strongly. "Not that, not that, Esmeralda. Not
the bloom.