How long ago that seemed, like a remembrance of early childhood in the
heart of one who is old.
Now that the gate was open she resolved to go into the garden. She might
as well be there as elsewhere. She stepped in, holding the rose in her
hand. One of the drops of water slipped from an outer petal and fell
upon the sand. She thought of it as a tear. The rose was weeping, but
her eyes were dry. She touched the rose with her lips.
To-day the garden was like a stranger to her, but a stranger with whom
she had once--long, long ago--been intimate, whom she had trusted, and
by whom she had been betrayed. She looked at it and knew that she had
thought it beautiful and loved it. From its recesses had come to her
troops of dreams. The leaves of its trees had touched her as with tender
hands. The waters of its rills had whispered to her of the hidden things
that lie in the breast of joy. The golden rays that played through its
scented alleys had played, too, through the shadows of her heart, making
a warmth and light there that seemed to come from heaven. She knew this
as one knows of the apparent humanity that greeted one's own humanity in
the friend who is a friend no longer, and she sickened at it as at the
thought of remembered intimacy with one proved treacherous.
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