how pretty, while she was about it, she could make herself look;
and very nearly she stuck a crimson camellia in her hair down by her
ear. She did hold it there for a minute, and it looked almost sinfully
attractive and was exactly the colour of her mouth, but she took it out
again with a smile and a sigh and put it in the proper place for
flowers, which is water. She mustn't be silly, she thought. Think of
the poor. Soon she would be back with them again, and what would a
camellia behind her ear seem like then? Simply fantastic.

But on one thing she was determined: the first thing she would do
when she got home would be to have it out with Frederick. If he didn't
come to San Salvatore that is what she would do--the very first thing.
Long ago she ought to have done this, but always she had been
handicapped, when she tried to, by being so dreadfully fond of him and
so much afraid that fresh wounds were going to be given her wretched,
soft heart. But now let him wound her as much as he chose, as much as
he possibly could, she would still have it out with him. Not that he
ever intentionally wounded her; she knew he never meant to, she knew he
often had no idea of having done it. For a person who wrote books,
thought Rose, Frederick didn't seem to have much imagination. Anyhow,
she said to herself, getting up from the dressing-table, things
couldn't go on like this. She would have it out with him. This
separate life, this freezing loneliness, she had had enough of it. Why
shouldn't she too be happy? Why on earth--the energetic expression
matched her mood of rebelliousness--shouldn't she too be loved and
allowed to love?

She looked at her little clock. Still ten minutes before dinner.
Tired of staying in her bedroom she thought she would go on to Mrs.
Fisher's battlements, which would be empty at this hour, and watch the
moon rise out of the sea.

She went into the deserted upper hall with this intention, but
was attracted on her way along it by the firelight shining through the
open door of the drawing-room.

How gay it looked. The fire transformed the room. A dark, ugly
room in the daytime, it was transformed just as she had been
transformed by the warmth of--no, she wouldn't be silly; she would
think of the poor; the thought of them always brought her down to
sobriety at once.

She peeped in. Firelight and flowers; and outside the deep slits
of windows hung the blue curtain of the night. How pre