As she passed through the garden, she saw that on a bush near the
fountain bloomed a late rose. She stooped and picked it, and flitting
in the dusk down the path, she entered the door which led to the Tower
stairway.
And when, an hour later, Roger Poole came into the quiet house, weary
and worn from the strain of a day in which he had tried to read his
letter with Mary's eyes, he found his room dark, except for the flicker
of the fire.
Feeling his way through the dimness, he pulled at last the little chain
of the electric lamp on his table. The light at once drew a circle of
gold on the dark dull oak. And within that circle he saw the answer to
his letter.
Wide open and illumined, lay John Ballard's old Bible. And across the
pages, fresh and fragrant as the friendship which she had given him,
was the late rose which Mary had picked in the garden.