m, with nothing but the tips of
their arms visible. At last she thought of the bed. She pushed a little
table near the head of it, and reared thereon a huge pile of violets.
Then she covered the whole bed with the hyacinths and tuberoses she
had plucked. They were so abundant that they formed a thick couch
overflowing all around, so that the bed now looked like one colossal
bloom.

The roses still remained. And these she scattered chancewise all over
the room, without even looking to see where they fell. Some of them
dropped upon the table, the sofa, and the chairs; and a corner of the
bed was inundated with them. For some minutes there was a rain of roses,
a real downpour of heavy blossoms, which settled in flowery pools in the
hollows of the floor. But as the heap seemed scarcely diminished, she
finished by weaving garlands of roses which she hung upon the walls.
She twined wreaths around the necks and arms and waists of the plaster
cupids that sported over the alcove. The blue ceiling, the oval panels,
edged with flesh-coloured ribbon, the voluptuous paintings, preyed upon
by time, were all hung with a mantle, a drapery of roses. The big room
was fully decked at last. Now she could die there.

For a moment she remained standing, glancing around her. She was looking
to see if death was there. And she gathered up the aromatic greenery,
the southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel. She
broke them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop
up every little chink and cranny about the windows and the door. Then
she drew the white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a
sigh, laid herself upon the bed, on all the florescence of hyacinths and
tuberoses.

And then a final rapture was granted her. With her eyes wide open she
smiled at the room. Ah! how she had loved there! And how happily she was
there going to die! At that supreme moment the plaster cupids suggested
nothing impure to her; the amorous paintings disturbed her no more. She
was conscious of nothing beneath that blue ceiling save the intoxicating
perfume of the flowers. And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none
other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now
increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating
that it would surely suffocate her. Perchance it was the breath of the
lady who had died there a century ago. In perfect stillness, with her
hands clasped over