e end of March now, the
year is no longer a swaddled baby, it is shooting up into a tall
stripling--I have been straying about the brown gardens, _alone_, of
course. It is a year to-day since Bobby and I together strolled among
the kitchen-stuff in the garden at home, since he served me that ill
turn with the ladder. Every thing reminds me of that day: these might be
the same crocus-clumps, as those that last year frightened away winter
with their purple and gold banners. I remember that, as I looked down
their deep throats, I was humming Tou Tou's verb, "J'aime, I love; Tu
aimes, Thou lovest; Il aime, He loves."

I sigh. There was the same purple promise over the budded woods; the
same sharpness in the bustling wind. Since then, Nature has gone through
all her plodding processes, and now it is all to do over again. A sense
of fatigue at the infinite repetitions of life comes over me. If Nature
would but make a little variation! If the seasons would but change their
places a little, and the flowers their order, so that there might be
something of unexpectedness about them! But no! they walk round and
round forever in their monotonous leisure.

I am stooping to pick a little posy of violets as these languid thoughts
dawdle through my mind--blue mysteries of sweetness and color, born of
the unscented, dull earth. As I pass Roger's door, having reentered the
house, the thought strikes me to set them on his writing-table. Most
likely he will not notice them, not be aware of them: but even so they
will be able humbly to speak to him the sweet things that he will not
listen to from me. I open the door and listlessly enter. If I had
thought that there was any chance of his being within, I should not have
done so without knocking; indeed, I hardly think I should have done it
at all, but this seems to me most unlikely. Nevertheless, he is.

As I enter, I catch sudden sight of him. He is sitting in his arm-chair,
his elbows leaned on the table before him, his hand passed through his
ruffled hair, and his gray eyes straying abstractedly away from the
neglected page before him. I see him before he sees me. I have time to
take in all the dejection of his attitude, all its spiritless idleness.
At the slight noise my skirts make, he looks up. I stop on the
threshold.

"I--I thought you were out," say I, hesitatingly, and reddening a
little, as if I were being caught in the commission of some little
private sin.

"No, I came in a