smothered. I wonder if she can be asleep."

Mr. Thorne went on into the dining-room. Mrs. Thorne knocked, in a whisper
as it were. There was no answer. She softly unlatched the door, and a draft
of air crept through, widening it with a prolonged and wistful creak. The
sleeper did not stir. She had changed her pillows to the foot of the bed,
and was lying in the full light, with her window-curtains drawn. In all the
room there was an air of abandonment, an exhausted memory of the night's
despairing heat. Mrs. Thorne stepped across the matting, and noiselessly
bowed the shutters. A dash of spray from the lawn-sprinkler was spattering
the sill, threatening to dampen a pile of dainty clothing laid upon a
chair. She moved the chair, looked once more at the lovely dark-lashed
sleeper, and left her again in peace.

Beside her plate at the breakfast-table there was a great heap of roses,
gathered that morning, her husband's usual greeting. She praised them as
she always did, and then began to finger them over, choosing the finest to
save for her guest. Rare as they were in kind, and opened that morning,
there was not a perfect rose among them. Each one showed the touch of
blight in bloom. Every petal, just unclosed and dewy at the core, was
curled along the edges, scorched in the bud. It was not mildew or canker or
disease, only "a touch of sun."

"I won't give them to her," said the mother; "they are too like herself."

She saw her husband go forth into the heat again, and blamed herself,
according to her wont of a morning after the night's mistakes, for robbing
him of his rest and heaping her self-imposed burdens upon him. He laughed
at the remorse tenderly, and brushed away the burdens, and faced the day's
actualities with the not too fine remark, "I must go and see what's loose