ancient house grew the most wonderful roses that I have ever seen
anywhere, not excepting California. Great white roses, so large and
fragrant that they seemed unreal, delicately moulded red roses, which
unfolded like a baby's lips, climbed those ancient stone walls. The
younger woman cared for them herself, and was engaged in that task of
love even before we went away.

I said to her, in what French I could command: "They are the most
beautiful roses I have ever seen."

"Even in your own beautiful America?" she asked with a smile.

"Yes, more beautiful even than in my own America."

"Yes," she said, "they are most beautiful, but they are more than that;
they are full of hope for me. They are my promise that I shall see him
some time again. They come back each spring. He loved them and cared
for them when he was alive. Even on his leave in 1915 he gloried in
them. And when they come back each spring they seem to come to give me
promise that I shall see him again."

Then I translated Oxenham's verses about the roses for her. The
translation was poor, but she caught the idea, and her face beamed with
a new light, and she said: "Ah, yes, it is as I believe, that the good
God who still makes the beautiful roses, he will not take him away from
me forever."

I never read Oxenham's verse now that I do not see that little cottage
in Brittany that has sheltered the same family for centuries; twined
about with great red and white roses; and the old mother and the young