a luxuriant Cloth of Gold, heavy with innumerable
flowers. Standing on tip-toe, with her arms above her head, she cut
half-a-dozen yellow buds, which she placed in the basket. Passing on,
she came to the pink glory of the garden, Maria Pare, a mass of brown
shoots and clusters of opening buds whose colour surpassed in delicacy
the softest tint of the pink sea-shell. Here she culled barely a dozen
roses where she might have gathered thirty. "Yellow and pink," she
mused. "Now for something bright." She walked along the path till she
came to M'sieu Cordier, brilliant with the reddest of blooms. She stole
but six of the best, and laid them in the basket. "We want more scent,"
she said. There was La France growing close beside; its great petals,
pearly white on the inside and rich cerise without, smelling
deliciously. She robbed the bush of only its most perfect flowers,
for though there were many buds but few were developed.

Next, she came to the type of her own innocence, The Maiden Blush,
whose half-opened buds are the perfect emblem of maidenhood, but whose
full-blown flowers are, to put it bluntly, symbolical of her who, in
middle life, has developed extravagantly. But here again was no perfume.
The mistress passed on to the queen of the garden, La Rosiere, fragrant
beyond all other roses, its reflexed, claret-coloured petals soft and
velvety, its leaves--when did a rose's greenery fail to be its perfect
complement?--tinged underneath with a faint blush of its own deep
colour.

She looked at the yellow, red, and pink flowers in her basket, and said,
"There's no white." Now white roses are often papery, but there was at
least one in the garden worthy of being grouped with the beauties in the
basket. It was The Bride, typical, in its snowy chastity and by reason
of a pale green tint at the base of its petals, of that purity and
innocence which are the bride's best dowry.

Rose cut a dozen long-stemmed flowers from this lovely bush, and
then--whether it was because of the sentiment conveyed by the blooms
she had gathered, or the effect of the landscape, is a mystery
unsolved--her eyes wandered from the garden to the far-off hills. With
the richly-laden basket on her arm, she gazed at the blue haze which
hung over mountain and forest. Regardless of her pleasant occupation,
forgetful that the fragrant flowers in the basket would wither in the
glaring sun, she stood, looking sadly at the landscape, as though in a
dream.