"And," murmured Stonie drowsily, "don't forget that good man for Rose
Mamie if you see him--and--and--" but suddenly he had drifted off into
the depths, thus abandoning himself to the crush of a hug Everett had
been hungry to give him.
And out in the starlit dusk he found Rose Mary sitting on the steps,
freed at last, with her responsibilities all asleep--and before him
there lay just this one--good-by.
Silently he seated himself beside her and as silently lit his cigar
and began to puff the rings out into the air. In the perfect flood of
perfume that poured around and over them and came in great gusts from
the garden he detected a new tone, wild and woodsy, sweet with a
curious tang and haunting in its alien and insistent note in the
rhapsody of odors.
"There's something new in bloom in your garden, Lady of the Rose?" he
asked questioningly.
"Yes, it's the roses on the hedges coming out; don't they smell briary
and--good? Just this last night you will be able to carry away with
you a whiff of real sweetbriar. To-morrow the whole town will be in
bloom. It is now I think if we could only see it." Rose Mary had
gained her composure and the poignant wistfulness in her voice was but
a part of the motif of the briar roses in the valley dusk.
"I'll see it all right to-morrow and often. Sweetbriar--it's going to
blind me so that I won't be able to make my way along Broadway.
Everything hereafter will be located up and down Providence Road for
me.
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