But the poor thing only asked him to love her. Michael drew her on to his knee. The leaves, the grass, the bees, whispered now so clearly that he began to understand the swimming in his head.
After a long and gloomy silence he spoke again. "Where have you laid him? Take me to him, Noémi."
"Not to-day," said Noémi. "It is too far for you—to-morrow."
But neither to-morrow nor the next day would she take him there.
"You would sit by the grave and make yourself ill again: that is why I have made no mound over him, nor raised a cross, that you may not go there and grieve."
Timar, however, was sad at this. When he was strong enough to walk alone, he went about seeking for what they would not show him.
One day he came back to the house with a cheerful face. In his hand he held a half-blown rosebud, one of those white ones which have no scent. "Is it this?" he asked Noémi.
She nodded: it could no longer be concealed. The white rose had put him on the track, and he noticed that it had been newly transplanted. And then he was tranquil, like one who has done with all that had given an object to life. He sat all day on the little bench near the house, drew on the gravel with his stick, and muttered to himself, "You would not exchange him for the whole earth full of diamonds, nor the whole heaven full of angels; . . . but for a miserable pipe you could strike his hand."
The beautiful walnut-wood house stood half finished, and the great convolvulus had crept over its four walls. Michael never set foot in it.
The only thing that kept up his half-recovered strength and his broken spirit was Noémi's love.