Presently the sun shone full upon her from the doorway: its light went through her as through coloured glass; and her man and his wife saw, over the ingle behind her, shadows fluttering as of falling rose-petals: it was the dying rose of her life, falling without end. All day long she dwindled and grew more weak and frail. Before sunset she was smaller than a small child when it first comes into the world. They set honey before her to taste, but she was too weary to uncurl her tiny hands: they lay like two white petals in the green lap of her dress. The half-filled panniers of roses stood where they had been set down in the porch: the good couple had taken nothing to the market that day. The luck of the house lay dying, for all their care; they could but sit and watch. When the sun had set, she faded away fast: now she was as small as a young wren. The gardener’s wife took her and held her for warmth in the hollow of her hand. Presently she seemed no more than a grasshopper: the tiny chirrup of her voice was heard, about the middle of the night, asking them to take her and lay her among the roses, in the heart of one of the red roses, that there at last she might die and pass into nothing. They went together into the dark night, and felt their way among the roses; presently they quite lost her tiny form: she had slipped away into the heart of a Jane Janet rose. The gardener and his wife went back into the house and sat waiting; they did not know for what, but they were too sad at heart to think just then of sleep. Soon the first greys of morning began to steal over the world; pale shivers ran across the sky, and one bird chirped in its sleep among the trees. All at once there rang a soft sound of lamentation among the roses in the rose-garden; again and again, like the cry of many gentle wounded things in pain. The gardener and his wife went and opened the door: they had to tell the bees of the fairy’s death. They looked out under the twilight, into the garden they loved. “Drip,” “drip,” “drip” came the sound of steady weeping under the leaves. Peering out through the shadows they saw all the rose-trees rocking themselves softly for grief. “Snow?” said his wife to her man. But it was not snow. Under the dawn all the roses in the garden had turned white; for they knew that the fairy was dead. The gardener and his wife woke the bees, and told them of the fairy’s death; then they looked in each other’s faces, and saw that they, too, had become white and grey. With gentle eyes the old couple took hands, and went down into the garden to gather white roses for the market. THE WHITE KING _TO_ KATE [Illustration] THE WHITE KING