im a green spike peeping from the soil.

"What is that?"

"What is it?--why, it is the mummy hyacinth which you declared that we
should never see blossom in this world. It has budded; whether or not
it will blossom, who can say?"

"It is an omen," he said, with a little laugh; and for the first time
that evening their eyes met.

"Come into the garden, and you can smoke on the museum verandah; it is
pleasant there these hot nights."

"It is dangerous, your garden."

She laughed softly. "You have proved yourself superior to danger."

Then they passed out together. The evening was still and very sultry.
Not a breath stirred the silence of the night. The magnolia, the moon-
flower, and a thousand other blooms poured out their fragrance upon
the surrounding air, where it lay in rich patches, like perfume thrown
on water. A thin mist veiled the sea, and the little wavelets struck
with a sorrowful sound against the rock below.

"Tell me all about it, Arthur."

She had settled herself upon a long low chair, and as she leant back
the starlight glanced white upon her arms and bosom.

"There is not much to tell. It is a common story--at least, I believe
so. She threw me over, and the day before I should have married her,
married another man."

"Well?"

"Well, I saw her the morning following her marriage. I do not remember
what I said, but I believe I spoke what was in my mind. She fainted,
and I left her."

"Ah, you spoke harshly, perhaps."

"Spoke harshly! Now that I have had time to think of it, I wish that I
could have had ten imaginations to shape my thoughts, and ten tongues
to speak them with! Do you understand what this woman has done? She
has sold herself to a brute--oh, Mildred, such a brute--she has
deserted me for a man who is not even a gentleman."

"Perhaps she was forced into it."

"Forced!--nonsense; we are not in the Middle Ages. A good woman should
have been forced to drown herself before she consented to commit such
a sacrilege against herself as to marry a man she hated. But she, 'my
love, my dove, my undefiled'--she whom I thought whiter than the snow
--she could do this, and do it deliberately. I had rather have seen
her dead, and myself dead with her."

"Don't you take a rather exaggerated view, Arthur? Don't you think,
perhaps, that some of the fault lies with you for overrating women?
Believe me, so far as my experience goes, and I have seen a good many,
the majority of them do not po