Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/27

 I was one. Day by day I studied the language of flowers. I became a hermit. As time went on I never left my garden. All else was forgotten in the contemplation of gorgeous orchids, sweet-scented jasmine and seductive eglantine. I forsook human life for floral, and in my renouncing I gained much. In my garden there grew a single fragile flower, orchid-like in glory, but of a species quite different to any I had ever chanced upon before. It was of the soft warm color of a tea rose with a tint of carmine, faintly suggested in the petals which were as velvet soft as the cheek of any maiden. By the hour I used to sit and listen to the sweet singing of that perfect flower. It was unlike any sound ever heard by man. The tinkle of a fairy bell would almost seem harsh by comparison. Is it any wonder then that I fell in love with that flower? The wonder is that the flower seemed equally enamored of me. It glowed more beauteously as I approached it. It swayed toward me. As I put down my head to breathe of the exotic fragrance it gently caressed my lips and the caress was softer than the kiss of the loveliest woman. In time I grew to call the flower, 'Dawn-Girl.' I idolized it. No lover of romance was more enraptured by his dear one than I. That garden became for me a sacred place. Great peace stole into my heart. The miracle of love had been performed anew. Like night and day it goes on endlessly. When love dies out on earth then will the sun grow cold.

"I was supremely happy, but my happiness was not