“Lady, I have slept with it every night under my pillow.”
“I should at least have pulled off the heel if I had been you.”
“Tell me, may I keep it?”
“I wish I might give you something worth your taking, Bonbec.”
“Saving yourself, I could wish no dearer gifts. They speak heaven to me—yes, the little soiled slipper and the little crumpled flower. So much so that, in fairness, I want to make you as inestimable a gift in return. Isabel, will you take my pot of basil, and cherish it for me?”
“I will love to—dearly I will.”
“It is so inconsiderable a thing, it would pass for a mere compliment. I have a strange feeling about it—now do not wonder why, or whence it comes—that its flowering will coincide with our loves’ triumph; that it waits to be the symbol of our bridal. Is not that an odd superstition—irrational, meaningless; and yet somehow I cannot shake it off.”
He smiled; but his eyes were serious. She answered as movingly:
“If love can make it flower, dear my heart, that day shall come quickly.”
“So I feel it,” he said. “Tend it; touch it; breathe on it—no more will be needed. It will think the spring is in its green veins; it will open its little smiling eyes, like a waking infant, to you its mother. Fancy it our sleeping baby, Isabel.”