plants one wet day in the greenhouse. Knight was
sitting under a great passion-flower observing the scene. Sometimes he
looked out at the rain from the sky, and then at Elfride's inner rain of
larger drops, which fell from trees and shrubs, after having previously
hung from the twigs like small silver fruit.

'I must give you something to make you think of me during this autumn
at your chambers,' she was saying. 'What shall it be? Portraits do more
harm than good, by selecting the worst expression of which your face is
capable. Hair is unlucky. And you don't like jewellery.'

'Something which shall bring back to my mind the many scenes we have
enacted in this conservatory. I see what I should prize very much. That
dwarf myrtle tree in the pot, which you have been so carefully tending.'

Elfride looked thoughtfully at the myrtle.

'I can carry it comfortably in my hat box,' said Knight. 'And I will put
it in my window, and so, it being always before my eyes, I shall think
of you continually.'

It so happened that the myrtle which Knight had singled out had a
peculiar beginning and history. It had originally been a twig worn in
Stephen Smith's button-hole, and he had taken it thence, stuck it into
the pot, and told her that if it grew, she was to take care of it, and
keep it in remembrance of him when he was far away.

She looked wistfully at the plant, and a sense of fairness to Smith's
memory caused her a pang of regret that Knight should have asked for
that very one. It seemed exceeding a common heartlessness to let it go.

'Is there not anything you like better?' she said sadly. 'That is only
an ordinary myrtle.'

'No: I am fond of myrtle.' Seeing that she did not take kindly to the
idea, he said again, 'Why do you object to my having that?'

'Oh no--I don't object precisely--it was a feeling.--Ah, here's another
cutting lately struck, and just as small--of a better kind, and with
prettier leaves--myrtus microphylla.'

'That will do nicely. Let it be put in my room, that I may not forget
it. What romance attaches to the other?'

'It was a gift to me.'

The subject then dropped. Knight thought no more of the matter till, on
entering his bedroom in the evening, he found the second myrtle placed
upon his dressing-table as he had directed. He stood for a moment
admiring the fresh appearance of the leaves by candlelight, and then he
thought of the transaction of the day.

Male lovers as well as female can b