it.

[Sidenote: Rosemary's Few Days of Joy]

Of course it would not be Mrs. Lee--Rosemary could laugh at that now.
Her jealousy of an individual had been merely the recognition of a type,
and her emotion the unfailing tribute inferiority accords superiority.
Married, and her husband not dead, nor divorced--manifestly it could not
be Mrs. Lee.

She longed to set him free, to bid him mate with a woman worthy of him.
Some glorious woman, Rosemary thought, with abundant beauty and radiant
hair, with a low, deep voice that vibrated through the room like some
stringed instrument and lingered, in melodious echoes, like music that
has ceased. She saw her few days of joy as the one perfect thing she had
ever had, the one gift she had prayed for and received. This much could
never be taken away from her. She had had it and been blessed by it, and
now the time had come to surrender it. What was she, that she might hope
to keep it?

"Lo, what am I to Love, the Lord of all
One little shell upon the murmuring sand,
One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand--"

The moment of shelter became divinely dear. Already, in her remembrance,
she had placed a shrine to which she might go, in silence, when things
became too hard. She would have written to Alden, if she had had a sheet
of paper, and an envelope, and a stamp, but she had not, and dared not
face the torrent of questions she would arouse by asking for it.

[Sidenote: No One Came]

Her face transfigured by a passion of renunciation, Rosemary reached
into the hollow tree for the wooden box, and, for the last time unwound
the scarlet ribbon. She tied it to the lowest bough of the birch when
the school bell rang, and went back to wait. Without emotion, she framed
the few words she would say. "Just tell him it's all a mistake, that
they need me and I mustn't leave them, and so good-bye. And if he tries
to kiss me for good-bye--oh, he mustn't, for I couldn't bear that!"

So Rosemary sat and waited--until almost dark, but no one came. Alden
had, indeed, hurried home to have afternoon tea with his mother and
Edith. He had almost forgotten the oriflamme that sometimes signalled to
him from the top of the hill, and seldom even glanced that way.

In the gathering dusk, Rosemary took it down, unemotionally. It seemed
only part of the great denial. She put it back into the box, and hid it
in the tree.

"Service," she said to herself, as she went home, "and sacrifi