I sigh. There was the same purple promise over the budded woods; the same sharpness in the bustling wind. Since then, Nature has gone through all her plodding processes, and now it is all to do over again. A sense of fatigue at the infinite repetitions of life comes over me. If Nature would but make a little variation! If the seasons would but change their places a little, and the flowers their order, so that there might be something of unexpectedness about them! But no! they walk round and round forever in their monotonous leisure.
I am stooping to pick a little posy of violets as these languid thoughts dawdle through my mind—blue mysteries of sweetness and color, born of the unscented, dull earth. As I pass Roger's door, having reëntered the house, the thought strikes me to set them on his writing-table. Most likely he will not notice them, not be aware of them: but even so they will be able humbly to speak to him the sweet things that he will not listen to from me. I open the door and listlessly enter. If I had thought that there was any chance of his being within, I should not have done so without knocking; indeed, I hardly think I should have done it at all, but this seems to me most unlikely. Nevertheless, he is.
As I enter, I catch sudden sight of him. He is sitting in his arm-chair, his elbows leaned on the table before him, his hand passed through his ruffled hair, and his gray eyes straying abstractedly away from the neglected page before him. I see him before he sees me. I have time to take in all the dejection of his attitude, all its spiritless idleness. At the slight noise my skirts make, he looks up. I stop on the threshold.
"I—I thought you were out," say I, hesitatingly, and reddening a little, as if I were being caught in the commission of some little private sin.
"No, I came in an hour ago."
"I beg your pardon," I say, humbly; "I will not disturb you; I would have knocked if I had known!"
He has risen, and is coming toward me.
"Knock! why, in Heaven's name, should you knock?" he says, with something of his old glad animation; then, suddenly changing his tone to one of courteous friendly coldness, "Why do you stand out there? will not you come in?"
I comply with this invitation, and, entering, sit down in another arm-chair not far from Roger's, but, now that I am here, I do not seem to have much to say.
"You have been in the gardens?" he says, presently, glancing at my little nosegay, and speaking more to hinder total silence from reigning, than for any other reason.