“What gown will--?” “Any gown--the white linen one I had on yesterday.” “Yes, Mam’selle.” “No, not that. Any other gown. Is it to be hot?” “Very hot, Mam’selle. There is not a cloud in the sky.” “How strange!” Domini said, in a low voice that Suzanne did not hear. When she was up and dressed she said: “I am going out to Count Anteoni’s garden. I think I’ll--yes, I’ll take a book with me.” She went into her little salon and looked at the volumes scattered about there, some books of devotion, travel, books on sport, Rossetti’s and Newman’s poems, some French novels, and the novels of Jane Austen, of which, oddly, considering her nature, she was very fond. For the first time in her life they struck her as shrivelled, petty chronicles of shrivelled, bloodless, artificial lives. She turned back into her bedroom, took up the little white volume of the _Imitation_, which lay always near her bed, and went out into the verandah. She looked neither to right nor left, but at once descended the staircase and took her way along the arcade. When she reached the gate of the garden she hesitated before knocking upon it. The sight of the villa, the arches, the white walls and clustering trees she knew so well hurt her so frightfully, so unexpectedly, that she felt frightened and sick, and as if she must go away quickly to some place which she had never seen, and which could call up no reminiscences in her mind. Perhaps she would have gone into the oasis, or along the path that skirted the river bed, had not Smain softly opened the gate and come out to meet her, holding a great velvety rose in his slim hand. He gave it to her without a word, smiling languidly with eyes in which the sun seemed caught and turned to glittering darkness, and as she took it and moved it in her fingers, looking at the wine-coloured petals on which lay tiny drops of water gleaming with thin and silvery lights, she remembered her first visit to the garden, and the mysterious enchantment that had floated out to her through the gate from the golden vistas and the dusky shadows of the trees, the feeling of romantic expectation that had stirred within her as she stepped on to the sand and saw before her the winding ways disappearing into dimness between the rills edged by the pink geraniums. How long ago that seemed, like a remembrance of early childhood in the heart of one who is old. Now that the gate was open she resolved to go into the garden. She might as well be there as elsewhere. She stepped in, holding the rose in her hand. One of the drops of water slipped from an outer petal and fell upon the sand. She thought of it as a tear. The rose was weeping, but her eyes were dry. She touched the rose with her lips.