ildren in the
streets--she was small for her age--

HOW warm--how kind of the Princess to send the muff.

MAYBE mother will soon be home from work--we can have supper--

BORIS will come from school--

BUT Boris lay dying--prisoner in the enemy's land.

WHEN a pale sun struggled to shine down on the dirty streets--on the
confusion and sorrow of that Russian city--an old Priest--dying with all
the rest--of sorrow for his land--found the frozen body of a little
girl--with hands clasped over her heart--a faint smile on her upturned
face.

ROSE PETALS

THIRTY years had passed.

THIRTY years that I had spent in vainly trying to overcome the love and
hatred which consumed me. However occupied I was with the pressing
affairs of my almost over-filled life I was conscious of an undercurrent
of despair--the despair that I had felt when Eve told me she no longer
loved me.

WE were engaged.

WHETHER she really loved me, or whether it was only a girlish fancy I
could not tell. But the day was set for our wedding and was not far off
when one Sunday afternoon I went to her house for tea.

* * * * *

THE mahogany table in the library was covered with fallen rose
petals--the roses he had sent her. Although no other detail of the room
has remained in my memory, I still can see the rose petals covering the
polished surface. By some inexplicable phenomenon those pink petals were
fixed forever in my mind.

I LEFT that part of the country and eventually lost all trace of Eve.

* * * * *

THIRTY years later I had a professional engagement with a client.

THE man was ill with a cold and asked me to come to his house--

I WAS shown into a large, stately drawing-room. Great portraits were on
the walls, there was massive furniture, fine oriental rugs. A fire
blazed on the hearth.

THEN I perceived it--the great bowl of roses with fallen
petals--scattered over the table

LIKE a knife they went through my soul----

ROSE petals----

EVE--the ring she had returned, which lay in some dark recess of my
desk----

THE door opened and a tall slim girl advanced--

EVE I cried--my eyes blurred till I could hardly see.

WITH a strange, somewhat strained laugh, the girl replied that she had
not been named for her mother, but it was often said that she was indeed
her mother's living portrait.

THEN she drew aside a heavy curtain--Before my dimmed eyes was a p