"Ah!" It was the man who was eager now. He spoke impulsively. "She will be happy then? She loves him?"
Rosemary looked at him with her clear, unfaltering eyes. "Oh, no," she said. "He isn't that sort of man at all. Besides, there is only one man in the world that she could care for in that way. No, she doesn't love him. But she is doing the right thing, and she is going to be good. You will not despise her any more?"
There was such anxious appeal in her eyes that he could not meet it. He turned his own away.
There fell a silence between them, and through it the long, long roar of the sea rose up—a mighty symphony of broken chords.
The man moved at last, looked down at the slight boyish figure beside him, hesitated, finally spoke. "I still think that I should like to meet Rosa Mundi," he said.
Her eyes smiled again. "And you will not despise her now," she said, her tone no longer a question.
"I think," said Randal Courteney slowly, "that I shall never despise any one again."
"Life is so difficult," said Rosemary, with the air of one who knew.
They were strewing the Pier with roses for Rosa Mundi's night. There were garlands of roses, festoons of roses, bouquets of roses; roses overhead, roses under foot, everywhere roses.