wind picking up their fragrance and squares
of limpid sunlight standing on the wet flagstones. Some of the
stall-keepers had little glass cases, and in these there was room only
for the Gloire de Dijons and the La Frances and the velvety Jacks, the
rest over-ran the tables and the floor in anything that would hold them.
The place rioted with the joy and the passion of roses, for buying and
selling. There were other flowers, nasturtiums, cornbottles, mignonette,
but they had a diminished, insignificant look in their tied-up bunches
beside the triumph of the roses. Further on, beyond the cage of the
money-changer, the country people were hoarse with crying their
vegetables, in two green rows, and beyond that, where the jostling crowd
divided, shone a glimpse of oranges and pomegranates. In this part there
were many comers and goers, lean Mussulman table servants and fat
Eurasian ladies who kept boarding-houses, Armenian women with
embroidered shawls drawn over their heads, sailors of the port. They
came to pass that way, through the sweetness of it, and this made a
coign of vantage for the men with trays, who were very persecuting
there. Lindsay and Alicia stood together beside the roses, her hands
were deep in them; he perceived with pleasure that their glow was
reflected in her face. "No," she exclaimed with dainty aplomb to the man
who sat cross-legged in muslin draperies on the table. "These are
certainly of yesterday. There is no scent left in them--and look!" she
held up the bunch and shook it. A shower of pink petals and drops of
water fell upon the round of her arm above the wrist, where the laces of
her sleeve slipped back. Lindsay had something like a poetic
appreciation of her, observing her put the bunch down tenderly, as if
she would not, if she could help it, find fault with any rose. The
dealer drew put another and handed it to her; a long-stemmed, wide-open,
perfect thing, and it was then that her glance of delight, wandering,
fell upon Laura Filbert. Lindsay looked instantly, curiously, in the
same direction, and Alicia was aware that he also saw. There ensued a
terse moment with a burden of silence and the strangest misgivings, in
which he may have imagined that he had his part alone, but which was the
heavier for her because of him. These two had seen the girl before only
under circumstances that suggested projection, that made excuse, on a
platform receiving the respect of attention, marching with her f