San Salvatore was rich in small gardens in different
parts and on different levels. The garden this window looked down on
was made on the highest part of the walls, and could only be reached
through the corresponding spacious hall on the floor below. When Mrs.
Wilkins came out of her room this window stood wide open, and beyond it
in the sun was a Judas tree in full flower. There was no sign of
anybody, no sound of voices or feet. Tubs of arum lilies stood about
on the stone floor, and on a table flamed a huge bunch of fierce
nasturtiums. Spacious, flowery, silent, with the wide window at the
end opening into the garden, and the Judas tree absurdly beautiful in
the sunshine, it seemed to Mrs. Wilkins, arrested on her way across to
Mrs. Arbuthnot, too good to be true. Was she really going to live in
this for a whole month? Up to now she had had to take what beauty she
could as she went along, snatching at little bits of it when she came
across it--a patch of daisies on a fine day in a Hampstead field, a
flash of sunset between two chimney pots. She had never been in
definitely, completely beautiful places. She had never been even in a
venerable house; and such a thing as a profusion of flowers in her
rooms was unattainable to her. Sometimes in the spring she had bought
six tulips at Shoolbred's, unable to resist them, conscious that
Mellersh if he knew what they had cost would think it inexcusable; but
they had soon died, and then there were no more.
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