The week before Easter she brought home a tall slender lily in a pot, with a single bud showing at the top of the green shaft. "They told me it would blossom for Easter," she said happily, but she did not tell him she had saved her carfare for days in order to buy it for him.
He was able to sit up now, but she would not let him go until it was quite safe for him to walk. She seemed to cling, hungrily, to her last days with him. "After Easter," she said bravely, "I won't keep you."
He was watching the lily with impatience almost equal to her own, and tiny lines of white appeared on the green sheath. One day, it seemed as if it would blossom too soon, and again, they feared that it would be after Easter when the perfect flower opened.
"It had to climb up through a pretty dark place to find the light, didn't it, Madonna?" he asked. "I suppose that's the way people do, and God knows I've had my share of the dark."
Her eyes filled with tender pity and he went on. "You know, Madonna, there's a pretty theory to the effect that you must suffer before you amount to anything. A man can't write nor paint, and a woman can't sing nor play before a cruel hurt. I don't mean the kind that makes a few tears and is followed by forgetfulness—It's the kind that goes right down where you live and cuts and stings and burns. You never think of it without a shudder, even when the place heals up, if it ever does. If it's lost friendship, you never have such a friend again—if it's a lost love, you never can care again. Suffering would make a saint of you, but I don't want you hurt like that—dear little girl."
He spoke no more, but the questioning maiden eyes sought his. It was the day before Easter, and on the day following it he was to leave her.
For almost two months, she had been unfailingly kind to him; reading to him night and day, caring for him as though he were a child, and soothing him with her unspoken sympathy. Memory brought it all to him with peculiar distinctness, and a new impulse came to him—an impulse to lay bare his heart before the deep peaceful eyes of this child.
"Dear little Madonna of the Tambourine," he began, "there's a lot of things I want to tell you before we say good-bye.
"I saw your sweet face at a curbstone meeting once, in the days when I wasn't an outcast, and it's haunted me ever since. I wanted to find the peace which made you so secure and happy—to get at your secret of life. I wanted to be more worthy of—" He stopped and looked at her. Her eyes were shining like stars and with a little catch in his voice, he went on.