it was very hard. And dreadfully
dispirited he went up to his room, took a bit of paper, and tried to
write:

"DEAREST SYLVIA,

"It was most awfully sweet of you to put your stars on my beasts. It was
just about the most sweet thing you could have done. I am an awful
brute, but, of course, if I had only known what you were doing, I should
have loved it. Do forgive me; I deserve it, I know--only it IS my
birthday.

"Your sorrowful
"MARK."

He took this down, slipped it under her door, tapped so that she might
notice it, and stole away. It relieved his mind a little, and he went
downstairs again.

Back in the greenhouse, sitting on a stool, he ruefully contemplated
those chapletted beasts. They consisted of a crow, a sheep, a turkey,
two doves, a pony, and sundry fragments. She had fastened the jessamine
sprigs to the tops of their heads by a tiny daub of wet clay, and had
evidently been surprised trying to put a sprig into the mouth of one of
the doves, for it hung by a little thread of clay from the beak. He
detached it and put it in his buttonhole. Poor little Sylvia! she took
things awfully to heart. He would be as nice as ever he could to her all
day. And, balancing on his stool, he stared fixedly at the wall against
which she had fallen back; the line of her soft chin and throat seemed
now to be his only memory. It was very queer how he could see nothing
but that, the way the throat moved, swallowed--so white, so soft. And HE
had made it go like that! It seemed an unconscionable time till
breakfast.

As the hour approached he haunted the hall, hoping she might be first
down. At last he heard footsteps, and waited, hidden behind the door of
the empty dining-room, lest at sight of him she should turn back. He had
rehearsed what he was going to do--bend down and kiss her hand and say:
"Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful lady in the world, and I the
most unfortunate knight upon the earth," from his favourite passage out
of his favourite book, 'Don Quixote.' She would surely forgive him then,
and his heart would no longer hurt him. Certainly she could never go on
making him so miserable if she knew his feelings! She was too soft and
gentle for that. Alas! it was not Sylvia who came; but Anna, fresh from
sleep, with her ice-green eyes and bright hair; and in sudden strange
antipathy to her, that strong, vivid figure, he stood dumb. And this
first lonely moment, which he had so many times