Now one morning, soon after this, in the late season of roses, her man had gone before his wife into the garden, gathering for the market in the grey dusk before dawn; and wherever he went moths and beetles came flocking to the light of his lantern, beating against its horn shutters and crying to get in. Out of each rose, as the light fell on it, winged things sprang up into the darkness; but all the roses were bowed and heavy as if with grief. As he picked them from the stem great showers of dew fell out of them, making pools in the hollow of his palm. There was such a sound of tears that he stopped to listen, and, surely, from all round the garden came the “drip, drip” of falling dew. Yet the pathways under foot were all dry: there had been no rain and but little dew. Whence was it, then, that the roses so shook and sobbed? For under the stems, surely, there was something that sobbed; and suddenly the light of the lantern took hold of a beautiful small figure, about three feet high, dressed in old rose and green, that went languidly from flower to flower. She lifted up such tired hands to draw their heads down to hers; and to each one she kissed she made a weary little sound of farewell, her beautiful face broken up with grief; and now and then out of her lips ran soft chuckling laughter, as if she still meant to be glad, but could not. The gardener broke into tears to behold a sight so pitiful; and his wife had stolen out silently to his side, and was weeping too. “Drip, drip” went the roses: wherever she came and kissed, they all began weeping. The gardener and his wife knelt down and watched her; in and out, in and out, not a rose-blossom did she miss. She came nearer and nearer, and at last was standing before them. She seemed hardly able to draw limb after limb, so weak was she; and her filmy garments hung heavy as chains. A little voice said in their ears, “Kiss me, I am dying!” They tasted her breath of rose. “Do not die!” they said simply. “I have lived three hundred years,” she answered. “Now I must die. I am the Luck of the Roses, but I must leave them and die.” “When must you die?” said her man and his wife. The little lady said: “Before the last roses are over; the chills of night take me, the first frost will kill me. Soon I must die. Now I must dwindle and dwindle, for little life is left to me, and only so can I keep warm. As life and heat grow less, so must I, till presently I am no more.” She was a little thing already—not old, she did not seem old, but delicate as a snowflake, and so weary. She laid her head in the hand of the gardener’s wife and sobbed hard. “You dear people, who belong so much to me too, I have watched over you.” “Let us watch over you!” said they. They lifted her like a feather-weight, and carried her into the house. There, in the ingle-nook, she sat and shivered, while they brought rose-leaves and piled round her; but every hour she grew less and less.