"Words, Evelyn, words. Take your life into your keeping, go abroad and
study, come back a great success."

"He would never forgive me."

"You do not think so.... Evelyn, you do not believe that."

"But even if I wished to leave home, I could not. Where should I get the
money? You have not thought what it would cost."

"Have you forgotten the knight that came to release the sleeping beauty
of the woods from her bondage? Fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds
would be ample. I can easily afford it."

"But I cannot afford to accept it. Father would not allow me."

"You can pay it all back."

"Yes, I could do that. But why don't you offer to help father instead?"

"Why are you what you are? Why am I interested in you?"

"If I went abroad to study, I should not see you again for a long
while--two years."

"I could go to Paris."

She did not remember what answer she had made, if she had made any
answer, but as she leaned forward and stirred the fire, she saw his
hands, their strength and comeliness, the kindliness of his eyes. She
was not sure that he was fond of, but she thought that she could make
him like her. At that moment he seemed to take her in his arms and kiss
her, and the illusion was so vivid that she was taken in an instant's
swoon, and shuddered through her entire flesh. When her thoughts
returned she found herself thinking of a volume of verses which had come
to be mentioned as they walked through the Gardens. He had told her of
the author, a Persian poet who had lived in a rose-garden a thousand
years ago. He had compared life to a rose, an exquisite flower to be
caught in the hand and enjoyed for a passionate moment, and had recited
many of the verses, and she had listened, enchanted by the rapid
interchange of sorrow, and gladness, and lofty resignation before the
inevitable. Often it seemed as if her own soul were speaking in the
verses. "So do not refuse to accept the flowers and fruit that hang in
reach of your hands, for to-morrow you may be where there are none....
The caravan will have reached the nothing it set out from.... Surely the
potter will not toss to hell the pots he marred in the making." She
started from her reverie, and suddenly grew aware of his very words,
"However we may strive to catch a glimpse of to-morrow, we must fall
back on to-day as the only solid ground we have to stand on, though it
be slipping momentarily from under our feet." She recalled the
intonation of his