"Quite strong," she murmured miserably; "too strong. Only it seems impossible to live on in such misery. It's gone--the mainspring, everything! I can't drag along! Thank God, Pixie, you are here! I never could bottle up my feelings. It's Geoffrey--he doesn't love me any more. I'm not imagining it--it's true! He told me himself." "What did he say?" demanded Pixie practically. She displayed no dismay at the announcement, being used to her sister's exaggerations, and feeling abundantly convinced in her own mind that this was but another example. Geoffrey was cross this morning, but five days' residence under his roof had abundantly demonstrated that his love was not dead. "Now, what exactly _did_ he say?" she repeated, and Joan faltered out the dread words. There was silence in the room for a long minute. Then Pixie drew in her breath with a sharp intake. "The _bloom_!" she repeated softly. "The _bloom_!" The beautiful significance of the term seemed to occupy her mind to the exclusion of the personal application. She had a vision of love as the apotheosis of human affection, a wondrous combination of kindliness, sympathy, courtesy, patience, unselfishness--all these, _and something more_--that mysterious, intangible quality which Geoffrey Hilliard had so aptly described. Given "the bloom," affection became idealised, patience a joy, and selfishness ceased to exist, since the well-being of another was preferred before one's own; courtesy and sympathy followed automatically, as attendant spirits who could not be separated. Affection might exist, did often exist, in churlish, unlovely form, giving little happiness either to the giver or the recipient Love, the highest, was something infinitely precious, a treasure to be guarded with infinite care, lest in the stress of life its bloom should be destroyed. Joan, looking with anxious inquiry in her sister's face, read there an earnestness even exceeding her own. "Oh, _no_!" cried Pixie strongly. "Not that, not that, Esmeralda. Not the bloom. It mustn't go; it's too precious. It means everything. You mustn't _let_ it go!" "But I told you it _had_ gone. It's too late." "No!" Pixie shook her head. "I know better. There's time yet, if you'll be warned. Last night, when you were comforting Jack after his tumble, Geoffrey sat watching you as Dick watches Bridgie. It can't be all gone, when he looks like that. He has loved you, been proud of you, been patient with you for--how long is it you have been married? Seven years, and you need a lot of patience, Esmeralda! I suppose it's come to this--that you've used up all the patience he has." It said volumes for Joan's penitence that she allowed such a statement to pass unchallenged, and even assented to it with meekness.