“I can carry it comfortably in my hat box,” said Knight. “And I will put it in my window, and so, it being always before my eyes, I shall think of you continually.”
It so happened that the myrtle which Knight had singled out had a peculiar beginning and history. It had originally been a twig worn in Stephen Smith’s button-hole, and he had taken it thence, stuck it into the pot, and told her that if it grew, she was to take care of it, and keep it in remembrance of him when he was far away.
She looked wistfully at the plant, and a sense of fairness to Smith’s memory caused her a pang of regret that Knight should have asked for that very one. It seemed exceeding a common heartlessness to let it go.
“Is there not anything you like better?” she said sadly. “That is only an ordinary myrtle.”
“No: I am fond of myrtle.” Seeing that she did not take kindly to the idea, he said again, “Why do you object to my having that?”
“Oh no—I don’t object precisely—it was a feeling.—Ah, here’s another cutting lately struck, and just as small—of a better kind, and with prettier leaves—myrtus microphylla.”
“That will do nicely. Let it be put in my room, that I may not forget it. What romance attaches to the other?”
“It was a gift to me.”
The subject then dropped. Knight thought no more of the matter till, on entering his bedroom in the evening, he found the second myrtle placed upon his dressing-table as he had directed. He stood for a moment admiring the fresh appearance of the leaves by candlelight, and then he thought of the transaction of the day.
Male lovers as well as female can be spoilt by too much kindness, and Elfride’s uniform submissiveness had given Knight a rather exacting manner at crises, attached to her as he was. “Why should she have refused the one I first chose?” he now asked himself. Even such slight opposition as she had shown then was exceptional enough to make itself noticeable. He was not vexed with her in the least: the mere variation of her way to-day from her usual ways kept him musing on the subject, because it perplexed him. “It was a gift”—those were her words. Admitting it to be a gift, he thought she could hardly value a mere friend more than she valued him as a lover, and giving the plant into his charge would have made no difference. “Except, indeed, it was the gift of a lover,” he murmured.