ow, though she never said so. Are those camellias down by the
hedge? Oh, may I go out and pick some--for Granny?"

"I thought you might like them--and might want to pick them yourself, or
I should have had them ready. I sent for no other flowers. I remember my
mother telling me how Madam Chase loved them--as she herself did."

From an upper window, in the room to which he had been assigned, Leaver
saw Charlotte go down the garden path to the hedge, there to fill a small
basket with the snowy blooms. When she turned to go back to the house she
found him beside her.

"I see now why you wanted no other flowers," he said, as he took the
basket. "These are like her--fair and pure and fragile."

"She was fond of them. She wore them in her hair when she was a girl.
They have no fragrance; that is why I want them for her now. How people
can bear strong, sweet flowers around their dead I can never understand."

"I have always wondered at that, too," Leaver admitted. "My mother had
the same feeling." He looked closely at Charlotte's face, as the bright
sunlight of the Southern spring morning fell upon it. "You are very
tired," he said, and his voice was like a caress. "Not in body, but in
mind--and heart. I wish, by some magic, I could secure for you two full
hours' sleep before--the hour."

"I couldn't sleep. But I am strong, I shall not break down."

"No, you will not break down; that wouldn't be like you. And
to-night--you shall sleep. I promise you that."

"I wish you could," Charlotte said, and her lips trembled ever so
slightly. "But I shall not."

"You shall. Trust me that you shall. I know a way to make you sleep."

However that might be, she thought, his presence was now, as all through
this ordeal, the thing which stood between her and utter desolation. A
few hours later, when he stood beside her at the place which was to
receive that which they had brought to it, she felt as if she could not
have borne the knowledge that she was laying away her only remaining
kinswoman, if it had not been for the sense of protection which, even at
the supreme moment, he managed to convey to her. Her hand, as it lay
upon his arm, was taken and held in a close clasp, which tightened
possessively upon it, minute by minute, until it was as if the two were
one in the deep emotion of the hour.

All the beauty of spring at her tenderest was in the air, as the little
party turned slowly away, in the light of the late afternoon sun.