Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/52

Ararat, and Job stayed below to paw a toad. The little white rose followed me all over the lattice, and seemed to creep after me; it has a golden heart, and such a scent as I cannot describe; it is the kind of sweetness that makes you not want to talk about it. The electric light in the street was out, for this suburb, being of an economical turn of mind, never competes with the moon. There was moon enough—oh, there was enough, I think, for the whole world! For, when that happened which did happen, it seemed to me as if the whole world were looking at me.

As I sat, quite by myself, in Ararat, behind the vines, all flecked with leaf-shadows and flower-shadows (and thinking how pretty shadows are on white dresses and on bare hands and a little bit of your arm), I heard Job's tail hit the foot of the tree-house steps. And as I looked, it began to wag in the most unpardonable manner. Then I knew what had happened, and my heart leaped in my body like a live creature that had been caught in a trap. My lips moved, but they were as dry as a dead, red maple-leaf; my words refused me, and there could n't have been a rose in the garden as red as my cheeks, for I felt as if I could have died of fear and joy, and of shame because I felt joy. There is something