She ran out of the room, and returned with a large bunch of flowers, fresh and fragrant like herself.
"Are they not beautiful? Am I not a lucky girl? Just think! Two presents of flowers in one night!"
"Mine is a poor one, Lizzie."
"It is very pretty, and I shall put it in water all by itself."
She selected a flower from the bunch, and placed it in her bosom by the side of the other; then bent down until her lips touched it.
"You are fond of flowers, my dear."
"I love everything that is bright. I like to bury my face in them, like this, and shut my eyes, and think. Such beautiful thoughts come!"
Suiting the action to the word, she buried her face in the flowers, and saw pictures of the future as she wished it to be. It was filled with sweet promise, as it nearly always is to youth. And if fulfilment never comes, the dreams bring happiness for the time.
"Try!" she said, raising her face and holding out the flowers to him.
To please her, he closed his eyes among the leaves. But the visions that came to his inner sense of sight were different from those she had seen. For her the future. For him the past. The clouds through which he looked were dark and sombre; and as glimpses of long-forgotten times flashed through them, he sighed as one might have sighed who, wandering for a generation through a strange country filled with discordant and feverish circumstance, finds himself suddenly in a place where all is hushed, and where the soft breeze brings to him the restful sound of sweet familiar bells. But darker clouds soon rolled over these memories, blotting them out.