She longed to set him free, to bid him mate with a woman worthy of him. Some glorious woman, Rosemary thought, with abundant beauty and radiant hair, with a low, deep voice that vibrated through the room like some stringed instrument and lingered, in melodious echoes, like music that has ceased. She saw her few days of joy as the one perfect thing she had ever had, the one gift she had prayed for and received. This much could never be taken away from her. She had had it and been blessed by it, and now the time had come to surrender it. What was she, that she might hope to keep it? "Lo, what am I to Love, the Lord of all One little shell upon the murmuring sand, One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand--" The moment of shelter became divinely dear. Already, in her remembrance, she had placed a shrine to which she might go, in silence, when things became too hard. She would have written to Alden, if she had had a sheet of paper, and an envelope, and a stamp, but she had not, and dared not face the torrent of questions she would arouse by asking for it. [Sidenote: No One Came] Her face transfigured by a passion of renunciation, Rosemary reached into the hollow tree for the wooden box, and, for the last time unwound the scarlet ribbon. She tied it to the lowest bough of the birch when the school bell rang, and went back to wait. Without emotion, she framed the few words she would say. "Just tell him it's all a mistake, that they need me and I mustn't leave them, and so good-bye. And if he tries to kiss me for good-bye--oh, he mustn't, for I couldn't bear that!" So Rosemary sat and waited--until almost dark, but no one came. Alden had, indeed, hurried home to have afternoon tea with his mother and Edith. He had almost forgotten the oriflamme that sometimes signalled to him from the top of the hill, and seldom even glanced that way. In the gathering dusk, Rosemary took it down, unemotionally. It seemed only part of the great denial. She put it back into the box, and hid it in the tree. "Service," she said to herself, as she went home, "and sacrifice. Giving, not receiving; asking, not answer. And this is love!" XIII The Stain of the Rose [Sidenote: Put Aside] Alden had put Rosemary aside as though in a mental pigeon-hole. If vague thoughts of her came now and then to trouble him, he showed no sign of it. As weeks and months had sometimes passed without a meeting, why should it be different now? Moreover, he was busy, as she must know, with the vineyard and school, and a guest. He had ordered several books on the subject of vine-culture, and was reading a great deal, though a close observer might have noted long intervals in which he took no heed of the book, but stared dreamily into space. He saw Edith at the table, and in the evenings, and occasionally at afternoon tea--a pleasant custom which she and Madame never failed to observe,--but she seemed to make it a point not to trespass upon his daylight hours.