"That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive,