into
radiance, with her dimples and flashing teeth. But I knew it never
could be; I felt sure she hated me; that she wished I was dead; that she
wished I had never come to the village. She did not know, when we went
out riding, and a man who had always ridden beside her came to ride
beside me, that I sent him away; that once when a man thought to win
my favour by ridiculing her slow drawl before me I turned on him so
fiercely that he never dared come before me again. I knew she knew that
at the hotel men had made a bet as to which was the prettier, she or I,
and had asked each man who came in, and that the one who had staked on
me won. I hated them for it, but I would not let her see that I cared
about what she felt towards me.

She and I never spoke to each other.

If we met in the village street we bowed and passed on; when we shook
hands we did so silently, and did not look at each other. But I thought
she felt my presence in a room just as I felt hers.

At last the time for my going came. I was to leave the next day. Some
one I knew gave a party in my honour, to which all the village was
invited.

It was midwinter. There was nothing in the gardens but a few dahlias and
chrysanthemums, and I suppose that for two hundred miles round there
was not a rose to be bought for love or money. Only in the garden of a
friend of mine, in a sunny corner between the oven and the brick wall,
there was a rose tree growing which had on it one bud. It was white, and
it had been promised to the fair haired girl to wear at the party.

The evening came; when I arrived and went to the waiting-room, to take
off my mantle, I found the girl there already. She was dressed in pure
white, with her great white arms and shoulders showing, and her bright
hair glittering in the candle-light, and the white rose fastened at her
breast. She looked like a queen. I said "Good-evening," and turned away
quickly to the glass to arrange my old black scarf across my old black
dress.

Then I felt a hand touch my hair.

"Stand still," she said.

I looked in the glass. She had taken the white rose from her breast, and
was fastening it in my hair.

"How nice dark hair is; it sets off flowers so." She stepped back and
looked at me. "It looks much better there!"

I turned round.

"You are so beautiful to me," I said.

"Y-e-s," she said, with her slow Colonial drawl; "I'm so glad."

We stood looking at each other.

Then they came in and swept us