“How beautiful the garden is, in the moonlight, isn’t it?” she said. “The shadows, and the statues, and the fountains. And how sweet the air is. They’re the hyacinths that smell so sweet. The hyacinth is your birthday flower, you know. Hyacinths bring happiness to people born in March.” I looked into her eyes, and my heart thrilled and thrilled. And then, somehow, somehow... Oh, I don’t remember what I said; only somehow, somehow... Ah, but I do remember very clearly what she answered—so softly, so softly, while her hand lay in mine. I remember it very clearly, and at the memory, even now, years afterwards, I confess my heart thrills again. We were joined, in a minute or two, by Monsignor Parlaghi, and we tried to behave as if he were not unwelcome. Adam and Eve were driven from Eden for their guilt; but it was Innocence that lost our Eden for Rosalys and me. In our egregious innocence, we had determined that I should call upon Aunt Elizabeth in the morning, and formally demand her sanction to our engagement! Do I need to recount the history of that interview? Of my aunt’s incredulity, that gradually changed to scorn and anger? Of how I was fleered at and flouted, and taunted with my youth, and called a fool and a coxcomb, and sent about my business with the information that the portals of the Palazzo Zacchinelli would remain eternally closed against me for the future, and that my people “would be written to”? I was not even allowed to see my cousin to say good-bye. “And mind you, we’ll have no letter writing,” cried Aunt Elizabeth. “I shall forbid Rosalys to receive any letters from you.” Guilt (we are taught) can be annulled, and its punishment remitted, if we do heartily repent. But innocence? Goodness knows how heartily I repented; yet I never found that a pennyweight of the punishment was remitted. At the week’s end I got a letter from my people recalling me to Paris. And I never saw Rosalys again. And some years afterwards she married an Italian, a nephew of Cardinal Badascalchi. And in 1887, at Viareggio, she died.... Eh bien, voilà! There is the little inachieved, the little unfulfilled romance, written for me in her name, Cousin Rosalys. What of it? Oh, nothing—except—except... Oh, nothing. “All good things come to him who waits.” Perhaps. But we know how apt they are to come too late; and—sometimes they come too early. FLOWER O’ THE CLOVE I