at breakfast time, beside her plate.

She took the flowers from him, acknowledged their fragrance by a
quiver of her delicate nostrils, thanked him, and laid them on the
dressing-table.

He seated himself on the window-sill, where he could see her with the day
upon her. She noticed that he had brought with him, beside the flowers, a
small oblong wooden box. He laid the box on his knee and covered it with
his hand. He sat very still, looking at her as her firm white hands
caressed her coiled hair into shape. Once she moved his flowers to find
her comb, and laid them down again.

"Aren't you going to wear them?" he inquired anxiously.

Her upper lip lifted an instant, caught up, in its fashion, by the pretty
play of the little sensitive amber mole. Two small white teeth showed and
were hidden again. It was as if she had been about to smile, or to speak,
and had thought better of it.

She took up the flowers and tried them, now at her breast, and now at her
waist.

"Where shall I put them?" said she. "Here? Or here?"

"Just there."

She let them stay there in the hollow of her breast.

He laid the box on the dressing-table close to her hand where it searched
for pins.

"I've brought you this," he said gently.

She smiled that divine and virgin smile of hers. Anne was big, but her
smile was small and close and shy.

"You remembered my birthday?"

"Did you think I should forget?"

She opened the lid with cool unhurried fingers. Under the wrappings of
tissue paper and cotton wool, a shape struck clear and firm and familiar
to her touch. A sacred thrill ran through her as she felt there the
presence of the holy thing, the symbol so dear and so desired that it was
divined before seen.

She lifted from the box an old silver crucifix. It must have been the
work of some craftsman whose art was pure and fine as the silver he
had wrought in. But that was not what Anne saw. She had always found
something painful and repellent in those crucifixes of wood which distort
and deepen the lines of ivory, or in those of ivory which gives again
the very pallor of human death. But the precious metal had somehow
eternalised the symbol of the crucified body. She saw more than the
torture, the exhaustion, the attenuation. Surely, on the closed eyelids
there rested the glory and the peace of divine accomplishment?

She stood still, holding it in her hand and looking at it. Majendie stood
still, also looking at her. He was not