r time thrown down to him, and the
thing it tied and that looked so black in the dusk was a red, red rose.

She pressed it to her lips. With quaking fingers that only tangled the
true-love knot and bled on the thorns, she stripped the ribbon off and
lifted a hand high to cast it forth, but smote the sash and dropped the
emblem at her own feet. In pain and fear she caught it up, straightened,
and glanced to her door, the knot in one hand, the rose in the other,
and her lips apart. For at some unknown moment the door had opened, and
in it stood Flora Valcour.

Furtively into a corner fluttered rose and ribbon while the emptied
hands extended a counterfeit welcome and beckoned the visitor's aid to
close the window. As the broad sash came down, Anna's heart, in final
despair, sunk like lead, or like the despairing heart of her disowned
lover in the garden, Flora's heart the meantime rising like a recovered
kite. They moved from the window with their four hands joined, the
dejected girl dissembling elation, the elated one dejection.

"I don't see," twittered Anna, "how I should have closed it! How chilly
it gets toward--"

"Ah!" tremulously assented the subtler one. "And such a dream! I was
oblige' to escape to you!"

"And did just right!" whispered and beamed poor Anna. "What did you
dream, dear?"

"I dremp the battery was going! and going to a battle! and with the res'
my brother! And now--"

"Now it's but a dream!" said her comforter.

"Anna!" the dreamer flashed a joy that seemed almost fierce. She fondly
pressed the hands she held and drew their owner toward the ill-used
rose. "Dearest, behold me! a thief, yet innocent!"

Anna smiled fondly, but her heart had stopped, her feet moved haltingly.
A mask of self-censure poorly veiled Flora's joy, yet such as it was it
was needed. Up from the garden, barely audible to ears straining for it,
yet surging through those two minds like a stifling smoke, sounded the
tread of the departing horseman.

"Yes," murmured Anna, hoping to drown the footfall, and with a double
meaning though with sincere tenderness, "you are stealing now, not
meaning to."

"Now?" whispered the other, "how can that be?" though she knew. "Ah, if
I could steal now your heart al-_so_! But I've stolen, I fear,
only--your--confidenze!" Between the words she loosed one hand, stooped
and lifted the flower. Each tried to press it to the other's bosom, but
it was Anna who yielded.

"I'd make you take