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.