“You forgive me—you understand, Janet?” he asked.
“Sometimes I don't know what to think,” she said, and suddenly clung to him. “I—I forgive you. I oughtn't to suspect such things, but I'm like that. I'm horrid and I can't help it.” She began to unbutton the coat he had bought for her.
“Aren't you going to take it?” he said. “It's yours.”
“And what do you suppose my family would say if I told them Mr. Ditmar had given it to me?”
“Come on, I'll drive you home, I'll tell them I gave it to you, that we're going to be married,” he announced recklessly.
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed in consternation. “You couldn't. You said so yourself—that you didn't want, any one to know, now. I'll get on the trolley.”
“And the roses?” he asked.
She pressed them to her face, and chose one. “I'll take this,” she said, laying the rest on the seat....
He waited until he saw her safely on the trolley car, and then drove slowly homeward in a state of amazement. He had been on the verge of announcing himself to the family in Fillmore Street as her prospective husband! He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal. And the ever-recurring question presented itself—was he prepared to go that length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him intensely—the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty.
When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the back of a drawer. Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love....