“Do they have to end?” said I.
“In my experience, always,” she nodded.
I was silent. My resolution, which I confess had wavered a little when she came through the doorway, was fixed again. Just the light banter in her tone had done it. We walked down the road, and went first around the house to take a look at the lawn and rose trellis. The young grass was already a frail green from the house to the roses, the flowers around the white sundial pedestal, while not yet in bloom, showed a mass of low foliage, the nasturtiums were already trying to cling, with the aid of strings, to the bird bath (which I had forgotten to fill), and the rose trellis, coloured green by the painters before they departed, was even now hidden slightly at the base by the vines of the new roses.
“There,” said I, pointing to it, “is the child of your brain, your aqueduct of roses, which you refuse to see in blossom.”
“The child of my hands, too; don’t forget that!” she laughed.
“Of our hands,” I corrected.
“The ghost of Rome in roses,” she said, half to herself. “It will be very lovely another year, when the vines have covered it.”
“And it will be then, I trust,” said I, “rather less like ’the rose of beauty on the brow of chaos.’ The lawn will look like a lawn by then, and possibly I shall have achieved a sundial plate.”
“Possibly you will,” said she, with a suspicious twinkle. “And possibly you’ll have remembered to fill your bird bath.”
She turned abruptly into the house and emerged with a pitcher of water, tiptoeing over the frail, new grass to the bath, which she filled to the brim, pouring the remainder upon the vines at the base.