witnessed it were very
pathetic. It was as if the man brought the flowers as a symbol of the
wonderful gifts he might have given her if they had been real lovers,
and as if the woman answered by those female murmurings that if they had
been real lovers she would have repaid him with such miracles of
tenderness. The gesture was always followed, he remembered, by a period
of silence when she laid the flowers aside for some servant's attention,
which was surely a moment of flat ironic regret.

But the roses that he had brought Ellen were no symbol but a real gift.
They satisfied one of her starvations. She was leaning over them
wolfishly, and presently straightened herself and stared at a dark wall
and told how early one spring she had gone to a Primrose League picnic
("Mother brought me up as a Consairvative. It's been a great grief to
her the way I've gone") at Melville Castle. There had been lilac and
laburnums. Lilac and laburnums! She had evidently been transported by
those delicate mauve and yellow silk embroideries on the grey canvas of
the Scottish countryside, and his roses had taken her the same journey
into ecstasy, just as the fact of her had brought him back into the
happiness away from which he had been travelling for years. They had a
magical power to give each other the things they wanted.

But she was uneasy. The clock had struck seven, and she had seemed
perturbed by its striking. "Do you want me to go?" he asked, with the
frank bad manners of a man who is making love in a hurry.

"Och, no!" she answered reluctantly, "but there's the shopping."

"Can't I come and carry the things for you?"

She brought her hands together with a happy movement that at the last
instant she checked. But indeed she was very glad. For nowadays if
anybody was unkind, and on Saturday nights people were tired and busy
and altogether disposed to be unkind, she immediately noted it as fresh
evidence that there did indeed exist that human conspiracy of
malevolence in which the sudden unprovoked unceasing cruelty of Mr.
Philip had made her believe. But if the client from Rio were with her,
things would not happen perversely and she would not think dark
thoughts. "That'll be fine. You'll make a grand jumentum."

"Ju--?"

"Jumentum, jumenti, neuter, second. A beast of burden. It's a word that
Caesar was much addicted to."

When she came in again from the hall he saw with delight that she had
put on her hat and coat in the dark