He came to her, halted beside her.  And suddenly a warm sweet fragrance filled the air.  She looked round in spite of herself and found a bunch of exquisite lilies-of-the-valley close to her cheek.  She lifted her eyes with a great start.

“Edward!”

His face was red.  He looked supremely ill at ease.  He pushed the flowers under her nose.  “Take ’em for heaven’s sake!” he said irritably.  “I hate the things myself.”

She took them, too amazed for comment, and buried her face in their perfumed depths.

He stood beside her, impatiently clicking his fingers.  There fell an uncomfortable silence, during which Vera gradually remembered her dignity and at length laid the flowers aside.  Her agitation had subsided.  She sat and waited noncommittally for the new situation to develop.  Even in their engagement days he had never brought her flowers, and any overture from him after a quarrel was a thing unknown.

She waited therefore, not looking at him, and in a few moments, very awkwardly, with obvious reluctance, he spoke again.

“I don’t think we want to keep this up any longer, do we?  Seems a bit senseless, what?  I’m ready to forget it if you are.”

Again, she was taken by surprise, for his voice had a curious urgency that made her aware that he for one had certainly had enough of it, and there was that in her which leaped in swift response.  But it was not to be expected of her that she should be willing to bury the hatchet at a moment’s notice after the treatment she had received, and she checked the unaccountable impulse.

“There are some things that it is not easy to forget,” she said coldly.

His demeanour changed in an instant.  “Oh, all right,” he said, “if you prefer to sulk!”

He swung upon his heel.  In a moment he would have been gone; but in that moment the inner force that Vera had ignored suddenly sprang above every other emotion or consideration.  She put out a quick hand and stayed him.

“I am not sulking!  I never sulk!  But I can’t behave—­all in a moment—­as if nothing had happened.  Edward!”

It was her voice that held pleading now, for he made as if he would leave her in spite of her detaining hold.  She tightened her fingers on his arm.

“Edward, please!” she said.

He stopped.  “Well?” he said gruffly.  Then, as she said nothing further, he turned slowly and looked at her.  Her head was bent.  She was striving for self-control.  Something in her attitude went straight to the man’s heart.  She looked so small, so forlorn, so pathetic in her struggle for dignity.

On a generous impulse he flung his own away.  “Oh, come, my dear!” he said, and stooping took her into his arms.  “I’m sorry.  There!”

She clung to him then, clung closely, still battling to check the tears that she knew he disliked.

He kissed her forehead and patted her shoulder with a queer compunction that had never troubled him before in his dealings with her.