THE SWEET-SCENTED NAME
anxious about him. I'm afraid he must have been taken ill suddenly. If he doesn't come soon, I think we must send and enquire about him."
Agnes Rudolfovna did not reply. She looked intently at the dancers. Her thin but still beautiful fingers trembled as she smoothed down the folds of her white dress.
It was strange and somewhat painful to look down upon this slow dance and to listen to the melancholy sounds of the waltz, played so precisely by the stiff brown hands of the musicians.
Yes, it was painful but yet sweet to the old lady to recall that far-off time when Edward and Agnes were still young, when he was a fine young man with sparkling eyes, and she a beautiful girl, beautiful as only a beloved and loving woman can be. In sweetness and in pain there revived in her soul memories of that far-off night in the happy month of May and of that old sweet wrong-doing, now long past with her departed youth.
Many years had passed away and she had kept her secret. But to-day Agnes Rudolfovna felt that the time had come when she must speak out the dreadful words of a delayed confession.
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