“Let us look everywhere. I want to be sure that no one has been here before us.”
She wandered out into the garden, a sweet and tangled place, sloping toward the sunset. The walks had gone back to grass, and the rose bushes were smothered with brambles. The four clipped yews by the sundial had grown into shaggy trees, and the herbs in the borders lived the life of the woods. Wild flowers had taken possession, buttercups, ragged robin, purple vetches, and great white daisies. There was a nut walk that had grown into a green tunnel; and a stone seat on the terrace under the wall of the house was almost hidden by bushes that had sprung up between the stones.
“This was a garden, and that was my mother’s seat. Men are very cruel.”
“And yet the place is very beautiful,” he said.
“With the beauty of sadness and of pain.”
In one of the borders she found an old rose bush that was budding into bloom, and one red flower had opened its petals. Her eyes glimmered.
“Why—this is a miracle!”
She plucked the rose, kissed it, smelled its perfume.
“Red is our color.”
And then a thought struck her.