collecting the few things she wished to take away with her, and wondered what were Eden's thoughts as he lay on the sofa reading, now and then giving her a swift look across the page.
An odd embarrassment had arisen between them. He no longer had need of her care; their relationship was meaningless. They were like two travellers, forced by the exigencies of the journey into a juxtaposition from which each would be glad to escape. If he came in tired, he no longer demanded her sympathy, but sought to conceal his weariness. She no longer tried to prevent his doing things which she thought would be bad for his health. His restlessness was a source of irritation to her, while her reserve, and what he thought her stolidity, made her presence weigh upon him.
Yet on this, the second day before her departure, a mood of pensiveness had come upon Eden. He felt a somewhat sentimental desire to leave a memory, not too troubled, of himself with her. He would have liked to justify by some simple, yet how impossible, act their presence together in these last weeks. They avoided each other's eyes.
Eden, to override his embarrassment, began to read aloud scraps from his book:
"'My idiot guide was on his way back to Aldea Gallega. . . . And I mounted a sorry mule, without bridle or stirrups, which I guided by a species of halter. I spurred down the hill of Elvas to the plain . . . but I soon found that I had no need to quicken the beast which bore me, for, though covered with sores, wall-eyed, and with a kind of halt in its gait, it cantered along like the wind.'"
Alayne was about to empty a vase holding some faded late roses. She stopped before him, drew out one of them, and slid it down the page on to his hand.
He took it up and held it to his face.
"Still sweet," he murmured. "A queer kind of stifling sweetness. But it's beautiful. Why are dying roses the most beautiful? For they are—I'm sure they are."
She did not answer, but carried the flowers to the door-
