d been bearing your anxiety,--that I
had been distressed by the absence to which you had grown
accustomed."

"I never got used to it, Margaret. It became more and more
unendurable. This workshop was full of--of your absence. There wasn't
a sketch or a cast or an object in the room that didn't remind me of
you, and seem to mock at me for having let the most precious moments
of my life slip away unheeded. That bit of geranium in the glass
yonder seemed to say with its dying breath, 'You have cared for
neither of us as you ought to have cared; my scent and her goodness
have been all one to you,--things to take or to leave. It was for no
merit of yours that she was always planning something to make life
smoother and brighter for you. What had you done to deserve it? How
unselfish and generous and good she has been to you for years and
years! What would have become of you without her? She left me here on
purpose'--it's the geranium leaf that is speaking all the while,
Margaret--'to say this to you, and to tell you that she was not half
appreciated; but now you have lost her.'"

As she leaned forward listening, with her lips slightly parted,
Margaret gave an unconscious little approbative nod of the head.
Richard's fanciful accusation of himself caused her a singular thrill
of pleasure. He had never before spoken to her in just this fashion;
the subterfuge which his tenderness had employed, the little detour
it had made in order to get at her, was a novel species of flattery.
She recognized the ring of a distinctly new note in his voice; but,
strangely enough, the note lost its unfamiliarity in an instant.
Margaret recognized that fact also, and as she swiftly speculate on
the phenomenon her pulse went one or two strokes faster.

"Oh, you poor boy!" she said, looking up with a laugh, and a flush
so interfused that they seemed one, "that geranium took a great deal
upon itself. It went quite beyond its instructions, which were simply
to remind you of me now and then. One day, while you were out,--the
day before I was taken ill,--I placed the flowers on the desk there,
perhaps with a kind of premonition that I was going away from you for
a time."

"What if you had never come back?"

"I wouldn't think of that if I were you," said Margaret softly.

"But it haunts me,--that thought. Sometimes of a morning, after I
unlock the workshop door, I stand hesitating, with my hand on the
latch, as one might hesitate a few seconds be