She turned back with a little gesture of despair and slowly, hesitatingly, detached the blossom from her gown.
“Of course I can’t refuse a starving man,” she said.
“It would be quite impossible,” he answered.
“And so”—she stretched the pink blossom out to him and he seized it greedily across the fence—“I shall take credit to myself for having saved your life,” she said soberly.
“Please do so every minute of the day,” he begged. “And now——” He held forth the withered spray he had received the day before. But she shook her head.
“I have so many fresh ones, you see.”
“But it was a part of the bargain!” he pleaded.
“Was it?” She accepted the limp cluster of faded blooms, viewed it carelessly, and dropped it to the path, where it lay, a pathetic symbol of Beauty’s perishableness.