Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/165

 “Ah!” she said to herself, “he is uneasy about his tulip.”

And rising with a heavy heart, she returned to her chamber, where she took a pen and paper, and, during the whole of that night, busied herself with tracing letters.

On the following morning, when Cornelius got up to drag himself to the window, he perceived a paper which had been slipped under the door.

He pounced upon it, opened it, and read the following words-in a handwriting which he could scarcely have recognised as that of Rosa, so much had she improved during her short absence of seven days,—

“Be easy, your tulip is going on well.”

Although these few words of Rosa’s somewhat soothed the grief of Cornelius, yet he felt not the less the irony which was at the bottom of them. Rosa, then, was not ill, she was offended; she had not been forcibly prevented from coming, but had voluntarily stayed away. Thus Rosa, being at liberty, found in her own will the force not to come and see him, who was dying with grief at not having seen her.

Cornelius had paper and a pencil which Rosa had brought to him. He guessed that she expected an answer, but that she would not come before the evening to fetch it. He therefore wrote on a piece of paper, similar to that which he had received,—

"It was not my anxiety about the tulip that has made me ill, but grief at not seeing you."

After Gryphus had made his last visit of the day, and darkness had set in, he slipped the paper under the door, and listened with the most intense attention; but he neither heard Rosa’s footsteps, nor the rustling of her gown.

He only heard a voice as feeble as a breath, and L