For the fiftieth time since breakfast Burton looked up from the littered table and gazed over the scene, inhaling the intense yet delicate perfume and bathing his sight in the little sea of color with a sensation of almost physical delight. And as he looked, there stepped into the scene a flower that dimmed the others as the moonlight dims the first faint radiance of the stars. He dropped his pen, heedless of the fact that it rolled over his clean sheets leaving a broken trail of ink, and leaned towards the casement with eager eyes and quickened breath.
The flower was dressed in white, in hue a modest blossom enough, its only color being a sash of lilac ribbon about its waist. On its head—for, after all, what does it matter if metaphors are mixed?—was a broad-brimmed garden hat wound about the crown with a filmy white veil. It—she—carried a basket in one hand and with the other held up daintily the skirt of her gown. For a moment she stood on the topmost step in the green shadow of a yellow Banksia, small, graceful, a very rose herself, and the fairest, daintiest in all the garden. Burton’s papers rustled in the tiny morning breeze and fluttered unseen one by one to the dark-hued, highly polished floor. He leaned an elbow on the sill and, without shame, kept his eyes upon the denizen of the rose-garden. After a moment of smiling survey of the scene the girl descended the steps and, basket at side, threaded the paths, snipping here and there with a pair of tiny scissors held in a gloved hand until [the basket] was filled and [weighted with pink and white blossoms].
[THE BASKET WEIGHTED WITH PINK AND WHITE BLOSSOMS]
Yet all the time the broad brim of her hat threw a soft shadow across her face, and it was not until she paused beside the iron fence to clip a single cluster of crimson Damasks that the watcher in the window was rewarded with a clear view of her features. Perhaps, for a Northerner, Burton was impressionable. At all events, it is a fact that when she lifted her face for a moment in an idle glance towards the neighboring house and the light fell fully, boldly upon it, his heart leaped chokingly and then, with a series of disconcerting bumps and thuds, raced faster than it had within his memory. And yet the glimpse he had was but a fleeting one, for the girl’s eyes encountered his own, and after a look of infinitesimal duration, a look pregnant with surprise and dismay, were swiftly lowered, while a faint blush crept over the warm, clear skin. The next instant the shadow had descended again; another, and she had turned away, blossom-laden, towards the house. Burton gazed after her, his mind a confused memory of warm, brown hair and clear, startled brown eyes; of a tender, oval face, southern-hued, sun-lighted; of small, red lips, upon which a little glad smile was fading before a look of confusion. Up the path she went, with never a look behind, yet not hurriedly; plainly, she wanted it understood that here was no rout, but merely a retirement in good order before a superior and better-positioned force. Suddenly from an open window of the house above her a voice called, a man’s voice, languidly imperative,—
“Kitty! Kitty!”
“I’m coming,” called the girl. She flew lightly up the steps, the door was opened from within by invisible hands, and the girl and the blossoms disappeared. The door closed with a subdued slam.