“What animal?”
“Man. You comprehend, my dear Rosa, a man may steal a guilder, and risk the prison for such a trifle, and, consequently, it is much more likely that some one might steal a hundred thousand guilders.”
“No one ever enters the garden but myself.”
“Thank you, thank you, my dear Rosa. All the joy of my life has still to come from you.”
And as the lips of Van Baerle approached the grating with the same ardor as the day before, and as, moreover, the hour for retiring had struck, Rosa drew back her head, and stretched out her hand.
In this pretty little hand, of which the coquettish damsel was particularly proud, was the bulb.
Cornelius kissed most tenderly the tips of her fingers. Did he do so because the hand kept one of the bulbs of the great black tulip, or because this hand was Rosa’s? We shall leave this point to the decision of wiser heads than ours.
Rosa withdrew with the other two suckers, pressing them to her heart.
Did she press them to her heart because they were the bulbs of the great black tulip, or because she had them from Cornelius?
This point, we believe, might be more readily decided than the other.