“Did she have princess-feather in hers, and candytuft, and sweet-williams?” Lillie turned over on her side, her hand under her cheek, and in her eyes a quick, eager glow.  “In mother’s garden were all sorts of old-fashioned flowers also.  We lived two miles from town and father sold vegetables and chickens to the market-men, who sold them to their customers.  But he never had as good luck with his vegetables as mother had with her flowers.  She loved them so.  There was a big mock-orange bush right by the well.  Did you ever shut your eyes and see things again just as they were a long time ago?  If I were blind-folded and my hands tied behind me I could find just where every flower used to grow in mother’s garden, if I could go in it again.”

Like a flood overleaping the barrier that held it back, the words came eagerly.  To keep her from talking would do more harm than to let her talk.  The fever in her soul was greater, more consuming, than that in her body.  I did not try to stop her.

“I don’t remember where each thing was in grandmother’s garden.”  I moved my chair a little closer to her cot.  “But I remember the gooseberry-bushes were just behind a long bed of lilies-of-the-valley.  It seemed so queer they should be together.”

“Lilies of the valley grow anywhere.  Mother’s bed got bigger every year.  There was a large circle of them around a mound in the middle of our garden, and they were fringed with violets.  One February our minister’s wife died.  They didn’t have any flowers, and it seemed so dreadful not to have any that I went into the garden to see if I couldn’t find something.  The ground was covered with snow, but the week before had been warm, and, going to one of the beds, I brushed the snow away and found a lot of white violets.  They were blooming under the snow.  I pulled them and took them to the minister, and he put them in her hands.  They used to put flowers in people’s hands when they were dead.  I don’t know whether they do it now or not.”

“Sometimes it is done.”  I took up the sewing an my lap and made a few stitches.  “Tell me some more of your mother’s garden.  Did she have winter pinks and bachelor’s buttons and snap-dragons and hollyhocks in it?  I used to hate grandmother’s hollyhocks.  They were so haughty.”

“We did not have any, but we had bridal-wreath and spirea and a big pomegranate-bush.  There were two large oleanders in tubs at the foot of the front steps.  One was mine, the other was my sister’s.  My sister is married now and lives out West.  She has two children.”

A bird on the bough of the apple-tree began to twitter.  For a moment Lillie listened, then again she looked at me, in her eyes that which I had noticed several times before, a look of torturing fear and pain and shame.

“Do”—­her voice was low—­“do you know about me?”

“Yes, I know about you.”

“You know—­and—­and still you talk to me?  I don’t understand.  Why did you come down here?  You don’t belong in Scarborough Square.”