here; then she shook her
head at it in disapproval, took it away, and held it out an inch
from Furnival's face. He recoiled slightly.

"It won't bite," she murmured. "It'll let you stroke it." She
stroked it herself, with fingers drawn tenderly, caressingly, over
petals smooth and cool as their own skin. "I believe it can feel. I
believe it likes it."

Furnival groaned. Straker heard him; so did Mrs. Viveash. She
stirred in her seat, causing a spray of Dorothy Perkins to shake as
if it indeed felt and shared her terror. Miss Tarrant turned from
Furnival and laid her rose on Mrs. Viveash's shoulder, where it did
no wrong.

"It's yours," she said; "or a part of you."

Mrs. Viveash looked up at Furnival, and her face flickered for a
moment. Furnival did not see her face; he was staring at Miss
Tarrant.

"Ah," he cried, "how perfect! You and I'll have to dry up, Straker,
unless you can go one better than that."

"I shouldn't dream," said Straker, "of trying to beat Miss Tarrant
at her own game."

"If you know what it is. I'm hanged if I do."

Furnival was tearing from its tree a Caroline Testout, one of
Brocklebank's choicest blooms. Miss Tarrant cried out:

"Oh, stop him, somebody. They're Mr. Brocklebank's roses."

"They ain't a part of Brockles," Furnival replied.

He approached her with Brocklebank's Caroline Testout, and, with his
own dangerous, his outrageous fervor, "You say it f-f-feels," he
stammered. "It's what you want, then--something t-tender and living
about you. Not that s-scin-t-tillating thing you've got there. It
tires me to look at it." He closed his eyes.

"You needn't look at it," she said.

"I can't help it. It's part of you. I believe it grows there. It
makes me look at it."

His words came shaken from him in short, savage jerks. To Straker,
to Mrs. Viveash, he appeared intolerable; but he had ceased to care
how he appeared to anybody. He had ceased to know that they were
there. They turned from him as from something monstrous,
intolerable, indecent. Mrs. Viveash's hands and mouth were
quivering, and her eyes implored Straker to take her away somewhere
where she couldn't see Furnival and Philippa Tarrant.

He took her out on to the terrace. Miss Tarrant looked after them.

"That rose belongs to Mrs. Viveash now," she said. "You'd better go
and take it to her."

Furnival flung the Caroline Testout on the floor. He trod on the
Caroline Testout. It was by accident, but still he tr