But it was dead
now; there had come to her, as it were, a sudden frost, and, as
befalls in the years, too, the late blooming flowers, the coloured
leaves, the last beautiful clinging remnants of life withered all at
once and fell away. It was unreasonable, perhaps, that the Captain's
theft of the daffodil and what arose from it should have had this
result; but then it was possibly unreasonable that hope and youth
should have had any autumn at all and not died right off when she said
"No" and meant it that afternoon in the early summer. But then the
mind of man--and woman--is unreasonable.
It was nearly half-an-hour later when Julia picked up the letters;
both were from Holland; one, she fancied, was from Mijnheer, one from
his son. She opened the latter first; she rather wondered what Joost
could have to write about; he had acknowledged the receipt of the
daffodil bulb long ago. The matter was soon explained; the letter was
as formal and precise as ever, but the emotion that dictated it, the
distress and regret, was quite clear to Julia in spite of the primness
of expression. Clear, too, to her were the conflicting feelings that
lay behind the lover's contrition for what he feared was abuse of his
mistress's trust, and the grower's desire that the treasured token
should be resolved into, what it was, a wonderful bulb, a triumph of
the horticulturist.
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