Women in Love

So there was quite a little festivity on Winifred's account, the day

Gudrun returned to Shortlands.

'You should make a bunch of flowers to give to Miss Brangwen when she

arrives,' Gerald said smiling to his sister.

'Oh no,' cried Winifred, 'it's silly.' 'Not at all. It is a very charming and ordinary attention.' 'Oh, it is silly,' protested Winifred, with all the extreme MAUVAISE

HONTE of her years. Nevertheless, the idea appealed to her. She wanted

very much to carry it out. She flitted round the green-houses and the

conservatory looking wistfully at the flowers on their stems. And the

more she looked, the more she LONGED to have a bunch of the blossoms

she saw, the more fascinated she became with her little vision of

ceremony, and the more consumedly shy and self-conscious she grew, till

she was almost beside herself. She could not get the idea out of her

mind. It was as if some haunting challenge prompted her, and she had

not enough courage to take it up. So again she drifted into the

green-houses, looking at the lovely roses in their pots, and at the

virginal cyclamens, and at the mystic white clusters of a creeper. The

beauty, oh the beauty of them, and oh the paradisal bliss, if she

should have a perfect bouquet and could give it to Gudrun the next day.

Her passion and her complete indecision almost made her ill.

At last she slid to her father's side.

'Daddie--' she said.

'What, my precious?' But she hung back, the tears almost coming to her eyes, in her

sensitive confusion. Her father looked at her, and his heart ran hot

with tenderness, an anguish of poignant love.

'What do you want to say to me, my love?' 'Daddie--!' her eyes smiled laconically--'isn't it silly if I give Miss

Brangwen some flowers when she comes?' The sick man looked at the bright, knowing eyes of his child, and his

heart burned with love.

'No, darling, that's not silly. It's what they do to queens.' This was not very reassuring to Winifred. She half suspected that

queens in themselves were a silliness. Yet she so wanted her little

romantic occasion.

'Shall I then?' she asked.

'Give Miss Brangwen some flowers? Do, Birdie. Tell Wilson I say you are

to have what you want.' The child smiled a small, subtle, unconscious smile to herself, in

anticipation of her way.

'But I won't get them till tomorrow,' she said.

'Not till tomorrow, Birdie. Give me a kiss then--' Winifred silently kissed the sick man, and drifted out of the room. She

again went the round of the green-houses and the conservatory,

informing the gardener, in her high, peremptory, simple fashion, of

what she wanted, telling him all the blooms she had selected.