crushed his energies, and will live to know his name forgotten. When you have lost me, you will know what I have been to you."
He knew at last—he was to know more later, when evil was done that good might come.
"I think," said Maisie, after a long silence, "that I should like to go out. We might go and see your sister. Will you come?"
***
Maisie sat up in her bed, her hair in pretty disorder, and rubbed her eyes.
"What did you say?" she muttered. "I was so sleepy, I had to go to bed. You dined with the publisher, didn't you?"
"I am glad you got my wire." (She was staring at his face, he was so very white.)
"The book is accepted," he added, much as he might have said that it would probably rain the next day.
She clapped her hands with delight. "O, Gerald!" She was one of those women who put on a certain dignity in the daytime, and become delightfully girlish when they reach their bedrooms. She laughed and congratulated him, and drew him down to kiss her, and chatted of her pride in him and her love for him, until the pain he suffered made his lips and hands grow cold. She was serious at once.
"You are tired, dear?"
He made up his mind that he would tell her that the book had been inspired, and he himself, encouraged and aided,
by a woman of whom he had never spoken and whom she had never seen. He was sick with remorse, but the words would not come.
"Gerald, darling," she whispered tenderly, "do you know what I have been longing to say to you for some time? You are your old self."
He started violently. She laid her head on his shoulder, and continued softly: "When I first begged you to resume work, when I first reproached you for leading an idle, aimless existence, I fancied that I had done wrong, for you were made miserable by what I had said, and for over a month we were not very happy, dear, you and I. Then you found yourself. You began to work; you were 'adorable' to me; you thought and talked as in the old days; you had the same ideas; you were the man I lost my heart to, and have loved ever since. And then this book. Who woke your sleeping faculties into life, sir, but your stupid wife? So I, too, have my little share in your work, as in your heart. I am so proud of you, my husband! And you are not angry because I scolded you for being lazy, are you, darling?"
"No," he answered. "Angry with you? God help me!"
"O, I'm glad you're changed again, and I'm so happy!"
The man tried to speak, and failed.
There was a pause. Then a voice, unlike his own, asked slowly:- "You are—what?"
"Happy — O, so happy!" repeated the girl.
Thorns.
It lies in my hand,
A dead, dead rose;
Not lovely now, but it once was fair.
No sweets are shed
From its petals dead,
But its thorns are sharp as ever they were.
It lies in my heart,
A dead, dead love;
Nor hope, nor happiness brings to me,
A faded flower,
It has lived its hour;
But its thorns are sharp as they used to be.
Florence May Wright
