"White or red?" she said, knife in hand.
He glanced at her.
"Red," he said, and his lips felt hot and dry.
Stella cut a red rose—a dark red rose, and with a little womanly gesture put it to her face; it was a little girlish trick, all unthinking, unconsciously done, but it sent the blood to the heart of the man watching her in a sudden, passionate rush.
"There," she said; "it is a beauty. They speak of the roses of Florence, but give me an English rose, Florentine roses are fuller than these, but not so beautiful—oh, not so beautiful! There," and she held it out to him, without looking at him. If she had done so, she would have surely read something in the white constrained face, and small, glittering eyes that would have warned her.
He took it without a word. In simple truth he was trying to restrain himself. He felt that the time was not ripe for action—that a word of the devouring passion which consumed him would be dangerous, and he whispered to himself, "Not yet! not yet!" But her loveliness, that touch of the rose to his face, overmastered his cool, calculating spirit.
"Thank you," he said at last; "thank you very much. I shall value it dearly. I shall put it on my desk in my dark, grim room, and think of you."
Then Stella looked up and started slightly.
"Oh!" she said, hurriedly. "You would like some more perhaps? Pray take what you would like," and she held out the knife, and looked upon him with a sudden coldness in the eyes that should have warned him.