osphere about her soul.
She loved glow and warmth and colour; such mysticism as she felt was
pagan; and she had few aspirations--sufficient to her were things as they
showed themselves to be.

This morning, when she had made herself smell of geraniums, and fastened
all the small contrivances that hold even the best of women together, she
went downstairs to her little dining-room, set the spirit lamp going, and
taking up her newspaper, stood waiting to make tea.

It was the hour of the day most dear to her. If the dew had been brushed
off her life, it was still out there every morning on the face of Nature,
and on the faces of her flowers; there was before her all the pleasure of
seeing how each of those little creatures in the garden had slept; how
many children had been born since the Dawn; who was ailing, and needed
attention. There was also the feeling, which renews itself every morning
in people who live lonely lives, that they are not lonely, until, the day
wearing on, assures them of the fact. Not that she was idle, for she had
obtained through Courtier the work of reviewing music in a woman's paper,
for which she was intuitively fitted. This, her flowers, her own music,
and the affairs of certain families of cottagers, filled nearly all her
time. And she asked no better fate than to have every minute occupied,
having that passion for work requiring no initiation, which is natural to
the owners of lazy minds.

Suddenly she dropped her newspaper, went to the bowl of flowers on the
breakfast-table, and plucked forth two stalks of lavender; holding them
away from her, she went out into the garden, and flung them over the
wall.

This strange immolation of those two poor sprigs, born so early, gathered
and placed before her with such kind intention by her maid, seemed of all
acts the least to be expected of one who hated to hurt people's feelings,
and whose eyes always shone at the sight of flowers. But in truth the
smell of lavender--that scent carried on her husband's handkerchief and
clothes--still affected her so strongly that she could not bear to be in
a room with it. As nothing else did, it brought before her one, to live
with whom had slowly become torture. And freed by that scent, the whole
flood of memory broke in on her. The memory of three years when her
teeth had been set doggedly, on her discovery that she was chained to
unhappiness for life; the memory of the abrupt end, and of her creeping
a