He shook his head, and leaning from his chair, stretched out his arm for
the parcel of white paper. "They are dying. Smell them! They yield more
scent when they die." She sat holding the flowers near her face, and not
thinking of him very distinctly, but not thinking of anything else.

"But they won't last."

"They will last this visit. I'll get new ones."

"Oh, how extravagant you are with happiness!..."

They looked startled and became silent. For every now and then among
their talk some sentence which they had thought discreet rang out with
a clarity which disturbed them.

Between them there had been no avowal, and neither could count on the
other's secret. She was not sure he loved her; and though he argued,
"Why should she come if she does not care?" he watched her sit by him
with as little confidence, with as much despair, as if she sat on the
other side of the Atlantic Ocean. "Is it raining again? How dark it
gets. I must soon go." She made gaps in and scattered that alarming
silence in which the image of each filled and fitted into the thoughts
of the other like an orange into its close rind. Yet so dark and perfect
is the mask of the face, so dull the inner ear, that each looked
uncertainly about, half deaf to the song which issued so plainly from
the other, distracted by the great gaps in the music.

"Won't you stay with me till you have sewn to the end of that frill?"

She sat down again without a word. And, greedy after his victory, he