“When I see you,” he told her very seriously, “when I see you, sitting here in one of our gray coloured meeting rooms, I can’t help thinking how appropriate your name is.  Rose-Marie—­there’s a flower, isn’t there, that’s named Rosemary?  I like flowery names!”

Rose-Marie laughed, as lightly as she could, to cover a strange feeling of embarrassment.

“Most people don’t like them,” she said—­“flowery names, I mean.  I don’t myself.  I like names like Jane, and Anne, and Nancy.  I like names like Phyllis and Sarah.  I’ve always felt that my first name didn’t fit my last one.  Thompson,” she was warming to her subject, “is such a matter-of-fact name.  There’s no romance in it.  But Rose-Marie—­”

The Young Doctor interrupted.

“But Rose-Marie,” he finished for her, “is teeming with romance!  It suggests vague perfumes, and twilight in the country, and gay little lights shining through the dusk.  It suggests poetry.”

Rose-Marie had folded her hands, softly, in her lap.  Her eyes were bent upon them.

“My mother,” she said, and her voice was quiet and tender, “loved poetry.  I’ve heard how she used to read it every afternoon, in her garden.  She loved perfumes, too, and twilight in the country.  My mother was the sort of a woman who would have found the city a bit hard, I think, to live in.  Beauty meant such a lot—­to her.  She gave me my name because she thought, just as you think, that it had a hint of lovely things in it.  And, even though I sometimes feel that I’d like a plainer one, I can’t be sorry that she gave it to me.  For it was a part of her—­a gift that was built out of her imagination,” all at once she coughed, perhaps to cover the slight tremor in her voice, and then—­

“To change the subject,” she said, “I’ll tell you what Rosemary really is.  You said that you thought it was a flower.  It’s more than a flower,” she laughed shakily, “it’s a sturdy, evergreeny sort of little shrub.  It has a clean fragrance, a trifle like mint.  And it bears small blue blossoms.  Folk say that it stands for remembrance,” suddenly her eyes were down, again, upon her clasped hands.  “Let’s stop talking about flowers and the country—­and mothers—­” she said suddenly.  Her voice broke upon the last word.

The Young Doctor’s understanding glance was on the girl’s down-bent face.  After a moment he spoke.

“Are you ever sorry that you left the home town, Miss Rose-Marie?” he questioned.

Rose-Marie looked at him, for a moment, to see whether he was serious.  And then, as no flicker of mirth stirred his mouth, she answered.

“Sometimes I’m homesick,” she said.  “Usually after the lights are out, at night.  But I’m never sorry!”

The Young Doctor was staring off into space—­past the raised platform where the girls of the club were performing.

“I wonder,” he said, after a moment, “I wonder if you can imagine what it is to have nothing in the world to be lonesome for, Miss Rose-Marie?”