Dream Life and Real Life | Page 9

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.
"Y-e-s," she said, with her slow Colonial drawl; "I'm so glad."
We stood looking at each other.
Then they came in and swept us away to dance. All the evening we did not come near to each other. Only once, as she passed, she smiled at me.
The next morning I left the town.
I never saw her again.
Years afterwards I heard she had married and gone to America; it may or may not be so--but the rose--the rose is in the box still! When my faith in woman grows dim, and it seems that for want of love and magnanimity she can play no part in any future heaven; then the scent of that small withered thing comes back:--spring cannot fail us.
Matjesfontein, South Africa.

III. "THE POLICY IN FAVOUR OF PROTECTION--".
Was it Right?--Was it Wrong?
A woman sat at her desk in the corner of a room; behind her a fire burnt brightly.
Presently a servant came in and gave her a card.
"Say I am busy and can see no one now. I have to finish this article by two o'clock."
The servant came back. The caller said she would only keep her a moment: it was necessary she should see her.
The woman rose from her desk. "Tell the boy to wait. Ask the lady to come in."
A young woman in a silk dress, with a cloak reaching to her feet, entered. She was tall and slight, with fair hair.
"I knew you would not mind. I wished to see you so!"
The woman offered her a seat by the fire. "May I loosen your cloak?--the room is warm."
"I wanted so to come and see you. You are the only person in the world who could help me! I know you are so large, and generous, and kind to other women!" She sat down. Tears stood in her large blue eyes: she was pulling off her little gloves unconsciously.
"You know Mr.--" (she mentioned the name of a well-known writer): "I know you meet him often in your work. I want you to do something for me!"
The woman on the hearth-rug looked down at her.
"I couldn't tell my father or my mother, or any one else; but I can tell you, though I know so little of you. You know, last summer he came and stayed with us a month. I saw a great deal of him. I don't know if he liked me; I know he liked my singing, and we rode together--I liked him more than any man I have ever seen. Oh, you know it isn't true that a woman can only like a man when he likes her; and I thought, perhaps, he liked me a little. Since we have been in town we have asked, but he has never come to see us. Perhaps people have been saying something to him about me. You know him, you are always meeting him, couldn't you say or do anything for me?" She looked up with her lips white and drawn. "I feel sometimes as if I were going mad! Oh, it is so terrible to be a woman!" The woman looked down at her. "Now I hear he likes another woman. I don't know who she is, but they say she is so clever, and writes. Oh, it is so terrible, I can't bear it."
The woman leaned her elbow against the mantelpiece, and her face against her hand. She looked down into the fire. Then she turned and