"Anything," she said, faint and beaten, "except things that stick out so." She searched about, opened the top drawer of the cupboard, and took out a faded wreath of artificial flowers: she said, "Rather take this!" and neither smiled nor wept! _He_ had often looked at it; but as he had sent it to her himself last New Year's Day, the day of their betrothal, and because it was so romantically beautiful (a white rose, two red rosebuds, and a border of forget-me-nots) every fibre of that tender heart of his would have stood out against parting with this pretty relic--this memorial of better, happier, days. The patient, resigned way in which she made the sacrifice of these poor old flowers tore his heart in two. "Lenette!" he said, moved beyond expression--"why, you know, these are our betrothal flowers!" "Well, who's to be any the wiser," she said, quite cheerfully and quite coolly. "You see they're not so _big_ as other things are." "Have you forgotten, then quite," he stammered, "what I told you these flowers meant?" "Let me see," the said, more coldly still, and proud of the goodness of her memory, "the forget-me-nots mean that I'm not to forget you, and that you won't forget me--the buds mean happiness--no, no, the buds mean happiness that's not quite all come yet--and the white rose--I don't recollect now _what_ the white rose means----" "It means pain" (he said, overwhelmed with emotion), "and innocence, and sorrow, and a poor white face." He clasped her in his arms, as the tears came to his eyes, and cried, "Oh! poor darling! poor darling! What can I do? It's all beyond me! I should like to give you everything the world contains, and I have nothing----" He ceased suddenly, for while his arms were round her, she had shut up the drawer of the cupboard, and was looking at him with calm, clear, gentle eyes, not the trace of a tear in them. She resumed her petition in the old tone saying, "I may keep the siphon and the horse, mayn't I? We shall get more money for the flowers." What he said was, "Lenette! Oh, darling Lenette," over and over again, each time more tenderly. "But why not?" she asked, more gently each time, for she didn't understand him in the least. "I had sooner pawn the coat off my back," was his answer. But as she now got the alarming idea into her head that what he was driving at was the calico gown, and as _this_ put her into a great state, and as she immediately began to inveigh warmly against all pledging of large articles; and as he clearly perceived that her previous coldness had been thoroughly genuine, and not assumed, he knew, alas! the very worst, a grief which no sweet drops of philosophy could avail to alleviate, namely--she either loved him no longer, or, she had never really loved him at all.