She ran up the gentle slope to the old-fashioned garden and threw herself under the tree from whence the dying odor came. She fell on her knees—the moonlight over her in fleckings of purification. She clung to the scaly weather-beaten stem of the tree as she would have pressed a sister to her breast. Her arms were around it—she knew it—it's very bark.
She seized a bloom that had fallen and crushed it to her bosom and her cheek.
“O Tom—Tom—why—why did you make me love you here and then leave me forever with only the memory of it?”
“Twice does it bloom, dear Heart,—can not my love bloom like it—twice?”
“A-l-i-c-e!”
The voice came from out the distant woods nearby.
The blood leaped and then pricked her like sharp-pointed icicles, and they all seemed to freeze around and prick around her heart. She could not breathe.... Her head reeled.... The crepe-myrtle fell on her and smothered her....
When she awoke Mrs. Westmore sat by her side and was holding her head while her brother was rubbing her arms.
“You must be ill, darling,” said her mother gently. “I heard you scream. What—”
They helped her to rise. Her heart still fluttered violently—her head swam.