Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/232

228 the drawing room. Leonor was offering her a marvellous flower of a kind she did not recognize. She took it and when she smelt it felt an inexpressible sweetness slowly penetrate her whole being; she was asleep.

She awoke full of joy, a thing that had not happened since the day of her great grief. She was smiling at Leonor before she had even seen him. They met on the stairs. Leonor heard a door slam, the sound of hurrying feet. He drew back to make passage room. It was Rose. Playfully, as she had already allowed him to do, he made as though to bar her way.

"You shan't pass," he said.

"Very well, I won't pass."

And she fell into the open arms that closed at once round her body—a happy prisoner.

"Do you love me, then? At last?"

"Yes, I love you."

Rose never once remembered that it was thus she had fallen into M. Hervart's arms in the staircase of the tower. She forgot in its entirety the first advantureadventure [sic] of her poor abused heart and her troubled senses. When M. Hervart's name was pronounced in her presence, it