stones. Three men knew what was under it; and no one else ever will.

Lily Kloof,
South Africa.



II. THE WOMAN'S ROSE.

I have an old, brown carved box; the lid is broken and tied with a string.
In it I keep little squares of paper, with hair inside, and a little
picture which hung over my brother's bed when we were children, and other
things as small. I have in it a rose. Other women also have such boxes
where they keep such trifles, but no one has my rose.

When my eye is dim, and my heart grows faint, and my faith in woman
flickers, and her present is an agony to me, and her future a despair, the
scent of that dead rose, withered for twelve years, comes back to me. I
know there will be spring; as surely as the birds know it when they see
above the snow two tiny, quivering green leaves. Spring cannot fail us.

There were other flowers in the box once; a bunch of white acacia flowers,
gathered by the strong hand of a man, as we passed down a village street on
a sultry afternoon, when it had rained, and the drops fell on us from the
leaves of the acacia trees. The flowers were damp; they made mildew marks
on the paper I folded them in. After many years I threw them away. There
is nothing of them left in the box now, but a faint, strong smell of dried
acacia, that recalls that sultry summer afternoon; but the rose is in the
box still.