It was the hour of the day most dear to her.  If the dew had been brushed off her life, it was still out there every morning on the face of Nature, and on the faces of her flowers; there was before her all the pleasure of seeing how each of those little creatures in the garden had slept; how many children had been born since the Dawn; who was ailing, and needed attention.  There was also the feeling, which renews itself every morning in people who live lonely lives, that they are not lonely, until, the day wearing on, assures them of the fact.  Not that she was idle, for she had obtained through Courtier the work of reviewing music in a woman’s paper, for which she was intuitively fitted.  This, her flowers, her own music, and the affairs of certain families of cottagers, filled nearly all her time.  And she asked no better fate than to have every minute occupied, having that passion for work requiring no initiation, which is natural to the owners of lazy minds.

Suddenly she dropped her newspaper, went to the bowl of flowers on the breakfast-table, and plucked forth two stalks of lavender; holding them away from her, she went out into the garden, and flung them over the wall.

This strange immolation of those two poor sprigs, born so early, gathered and placed before her with such kind intention by her maid, seemed of all acts the least to be expected of one who hated to hurt people’s feelings, and whose eyes always shone at the sight of flowers.  But in truth the smell of lavender—­that scent carried on her husband’s handkerchief and clothes—­still affected her so strongly that she could not bear to be in a room with it.  As nothing else did, it brought before her one, to live with whom had slowly become torture.  And freed by that scent, the whole flood of memory broke in on her.  The memory of three years when her teeth had been set doggedly, on her discovery that she was chained to unhappiness for life; the memory of the abrupt end, and of her creeping away to let her scorched nerves recover.  Of how during the first year of this release which was not freedom, she had twice changed her abode, to get away from her own story—­not because she was ashamed of it, but because it reminded her of wretchedness.  Of how she had then come to Monkland, where the quiet life had slowly given her elasticity again.  And then of her meeting with Miltoun; the unexpected delight of that companionship; the frank enjoyment of the first four months.  And she remembered all her secret rejoicing, her silent identification of another life with her own, before she acknowledged or even suspected love.  And just three weeks ago now, helping to tie up her roses, he had touched her, and she had known.  But even then, until the night of Courtier’s accident, she had not dared to realize.  More concerned now for him than for herself, she asked herself a thousand times if she had been to blame.  She had let him grow fond of her, a woman out of court, a dead woman!  An