Across Evangeline trailed the roses. It was a rigid, terribly rigid, Evangeline, but the roses saved her. Some softening grace emanated from them and touched the solemn little face. A little more of Evangeline than of Elly Precious peeped from behind them. "Carruthers!--et, tu, Carruthers!" murmured Miss Theodosia. For here again was the trail of the roses. Stefana had "posed" them in all the little pictures. The effect of a rose-draped Carruthers was almost startling. He gazed from behind them stolidly, unsmiling and unhappy-souled. Carruthers did not enjoy being taken. "Now look at Stefana," John Bradford said. This was his special exhibit--exhibit S. He watched Miss Theodosia's face as she glanced at the little blue print. No roses trailing there. Just a radiant-faced Stefana gazing at Miss Theodosia. It was the same face that hung on the walls of her memory. Miss Theodosia had the sense of roses there, out of sight; it was as if Stefana rocked them gently in her lap. "She wouldn't wear the flowers herself," the Story Man was saying; "Neither Evangeline nor I could make her. Queer little freak." "She is wearing them!" smiled Miss Theodosia, "I can see them. It's only because you are a man that you can't see,--you and Evangeline! Look at the roses in Stefana's eyes--in her soul--" "Oh, you woman! Women are curious things." "Women are romantic things--oh, you man! Why should you understand us Stefanas with your unsentimental soul-of-a-man? What do you know about our dreams?" She had not meant to say quite that. "Stefana's dreams," she corrected herself. "What do you know about them? And still--" Miss Theodosia looked up from the radiant little face of Stefana with her dream-roses to the man-face beside her own. "And still--you sent the roses," she said softly. CHAPTER VI A letter came to Miss Theodosia one day. Queer how disturbing a letter could be when for so long peace had enveloped her travel-worn spirit, though it might have been because of the peace that she was disturbed. Ordinarily a letter from Cornelia Dunlap was the forerunner of interesting events to break the monotony of life. But life was not monotonous now, and it presented interesting events without the intervention--mentally and unkindly Miss Theodosia termed it interference--of Cornelia Dunlap. "Why need Cornelia write me now, or if she does write, why can't she talk about mushrooms?" which were Cornelia's most recent palliative to her self-imposed and brief sojourns in her little home town. It had been cats when she and Miss Theodosia returned from Spain, Belgian hares after their long stay in Egypt. Miss Theodosia herself had never tried mushrooms nor Belgian hares. She had borne her short homecomings unpalliated, and had flitted again relievedly. Usually she and Cornelia Dunlap had flitted together. They had formed the flitting habit when family bereavements had left them both lonely women.