He smiled his welcome when Mr Burton entered, but when his glance fell on the bunch of bloemetjes he frowned. "I wish you didn't bring that litter with you every morning," he complained. Mr Burton, remembering his instructions, walked deliberately to the bedside and laid his offering on the pillow. "Zoe sent them," he explained. Lawless stared at him, and the blood mounted slowly to his hollow cheeks. "The devil!" he muttered. Then suddenly a wave of angry emotion swept over him. He seized the flowers in both hands, and flung them with all his feeble strength at the surprised, concerned little man, who jumped aside to dodge the missile as though it were a bomb. "I was afraid you would resent the familiarity," he said apologetically. "But she told me to use her name." "Oh! go to blazes!" Lawless muttered, already ashamed of the outburst. "What does it matter what you call her? ... Take back those bloemetjes to her, you old idiot, and tell her that until her consideration moves her to make her inquiries and offerings in person they have no interest for me." Mr Burton gathered up the strewn, rejected gift. "She has got my white Flower of Innocence here, I see," he remarked, and smiled with pleasure at sight of the bloom. Lawless was lying with his face turned away, staring out of the window. "You can leave that with me," he said quietly,--"as being appropriate." Mr Burton carried the disordered bunch of flowers back to the giver with a beaming countenance. "He flung them at me," he explained delightedly. Mrs Lawless looked hurt. The little man's pleasure in the scorn of her gift appeared to her unkind. "He kept back one bloom--a white one. But so long as you choose an emissary to convey your gift, he is not interested in it, he says." She looked at him in silence for a moment, her face flushing and paling in turns. Then she went close to him, took the despised flowers from him and rearranged them carefully. She put a flower in his coat, and drawing back surveyed the effect and him with a tender, affectionate smile. "That is because this morning I shall not accompany you," she said. "No," he answered musingly, and looked at her attentively over the tops of his glasses. "I suppose you won't. I shall miss you; but I shall not be lonely because I carry with me the glad heart." CHAPTER THIRTY ONE. The greatest situations in life are invariably incomplete, inexorably limited by the very stress of feeling that should make them effective and convincing, as, for instance, it does on the stage, where effect is duly studied and considered irrespective of the sensitiveness of the human mind that shrinks from making a display of its deeper emotions.