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<hr class="large" />[Pg 120] <h2>IX</h2> <h2>Rosemary and Mignonette</h2> <div class="blockquot">“ Sweet Lady of my Dreams, it cannot be that you are displeased. If you were, I should know, but do not ask me how! “Day by day, my eyes long for the sight of you; night by night my heart remembers you, for that inner vision does not vanish with the sun. You have unconsciously given me a priceless gift, for wherever I may go, I take you with me—all the grace of you, all the beauty, and all the softness. I have only to close my eyes and then I see. “But do not think I keep your image always before me, for it is not so. In the work-a-day world, you have no place. You belong, rather, to those fair lands of fancy which lie just beyond the borders of this world and are, or so I think, very near the gleaming gates of Heaven. [Pg 121] “I am not always at work, but sometimes, even when I am, you come tripping before my eyes, so dainty, so wholly exquisite, that I forget what I am doing, and then I must put you aside. But when the day is done, and the light of it shows only through the pinholes pricked in the curtain of night, then I can think of you, as radiant, as beautiful, and as far above me as those very stars. “All unknowingly, you are the light of my day. Whatever darkness might surround me, your eyes would make it noon. However steep and thorny my path, your hand in mine would make it a sunny meadow, swept by shadowy wings, where the white and crimson clover bloomed all day. “You give me life. You make the birds sing more sweetly for me; you make the roses more fragrant, the moonlight more like pearl. You have glorified the commonplace affairs of the day with your enchantment; you have put the joy of the gods into the heart of a man. “Do you wonder that, loving you like this, I do not make myself known? Sweetheart, it is because I fear. Already I have more than I deserve because you are not displeased with [Pg 122]me, and since I wrote last I have made progress. Would it surprise you very much if I told you I knew where you lived? “I fancy I see you now, with the scarlet signals flaming on your cheeks, but, Iris, I shall never intrude. It is for you to say whether I shall love you in silence and afar, or face to face, as I dream that some day I may. “I want you, dear—I want you with all my heart. Of all the women in the world, you are the one God meant for me. Otherwise, why have I been so strangely led to you? “Since the first day I saw you, I have knelt at your feet. Not for one moment have I forgotten you, so flower-like, so womanly, so dear. So will it always be, whether I live or die. Even to my grave, I shall take the memory of you. “To-night my memories are few, but my dreams—they are so many that I could not begin to tell you all. But one of them you must know—that some day you will let me tell you how much I love you, and promise me that I may shield you all the rest of your life. </div> [Pg 123] <div class="blockquot">“The wind should never make you cold, the sun should never shine too fiercely upon you, the storm should never beat against you, if I had my way. “Iris, may I come? Will you let me teach you to care? So sure am I of my love that I ask only for the chance to make you believe. “Put a flower on your gate-post when the moon rises to-night, if you are willing that I should come. Two flowers, if you are willing that I should come sometime, but not now. Then, when your name-flower embroiders the marshes, you will know who loves you—who worships you—who offers you his all.” </div> <hr class="medium" /> That night, when the moon swung high in the heavens, Iris tiptoed out into the garden, with the letter—sentient, alive, and human—crushed close against her heart. So conscious was she of its presence that she felt it blazoned upon her breast for all the world to read. Dew made the grass damp, but Iris did not care. Threads of silver light picked out a dainty tracery, and here and there set a dew-drop to gleaming like a diamond among [Pg 124]unnumbered pearls. Drowsy chirps came from the maples above her, where the little birds slept in their swaying nests and dreamed of wild flights at dawn. A great white moth brushed against her face, as softly as thistledown, and she laughed, because it was so like a kiss. Down toward her corner of the garden she went, her dimity skirts daintily uplifted. The moonlight touched a cobweb woven across the rose-bush, and made a rainbow of it. “A little lost rainbow,” thought Iris, “out alone in the night, like me!” She stooped and gathered a sprig of mignonette, then a bit of rosemary from Mrs. Irving’s garden. “She won’t care,” said Iris, to herself; “she used to love somebody, long ago.” She bound the two together with a blade of grass, and put the merest kiss between them, then impulsively wiped it away. But, after all, some trace of it must linger, and Iris did not intend to give too much, so she threw it aside, as it happened, into Lynn’s garden. Then she gathered another sprig of mignonette, another leaf of rosemary, bound them together, and held them very far away, out of reach of temptation. [Pg 125] Back toward the gate she went, her heart wildly beating against the imprisoned letter. She hesitated a moment in the shadow of the house. The great white moth had followed her and again touched her face caressingly. Suppose someone should see! But there was no one in sight. “Anyhow,” thought Iris, “if one wishes to come out for a moment in the evening, to walk as far as the gate, it is all right. If there should be rosemary and mignonette on the gate-post in the morning, someone who was up very early might take it away before anybody had seen it. There would be no harm in leaving it there overnight, even though it isn’t quite orderly.” She went bravely toward the gate, and the moonbeams made an aureole about her hair. The light of dreams, shining through the mist, transfigured her with silver sheen. The earth was exquisitely still, and the sound of her little feet upon the gravelled path echoed and re-echoed strangely. Timidly, Iris put the rosemary and mignonette, bound together by a single blade of grass, first upon one gate-post and then upon the other. “Such a little bit!” she mused. [Pg 126]“One couldn’t call it a flower!” Yes, mignonette was a flower, but rosemary? Surely, no! She walked backward, slowly, toward the house, and to her conscious eyes, the tell-tale message dominated the landscape. The moonlight fairly made it shine. Almost at the steps, Iris was seized with panic. Then her light feet twinkled down the path, and frightened, trembling, and ashamed, she thrust the nosegay into the open throat of her gown. “Oh,” murmured Iris, as she went hastily into the house, “what could I have been thinking of!” <hr class="medium" /> But across the street, in the darkness of the shrubbery, Someone smiled. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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