The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (11.1896)

By Max Beerbohm 31
But she was perplexed by his words and said to him, blushing,
“ How was it for me that you gathered them, though you had
never seen me ? ”
“ I gathered them for you,” he answered, “ knowing I should
soon see you. How was it that you, who had never seen me, yet
waited for me ? ”
“ I waited, knowing I should see you at last.” And she kissed
the posy and put it at her breast.
And they rose from their knees and went into the wood, walk-
ing hand in hand. As they went, he asked the names of the
flowers that grew under their feet. “These are primroses,” she
would say. “Did you not know? And these are ladies’ feet,
and these forget-me-nots. And that white flower, climbing
up the trunks of tire trees and trailing down so prettily from the
branches, is called Astyanax. These little yellow things are
buttercups. Did you not know ? ” And she laughed.
“ I know the names of none of the flowers,” he said.
She looked up into his face and said timidly, “Is it worldly and
wrong of me to have loved the flowers ? Ought I to have
thought more of those higher things that are unseen ? ”
His heart smote him. He could not answer her simplicity.
“ Surely the flowers are good, and did not you gather this posy
for me?” she pleaded. “But if you do not love them, I must
not. And I will try to forget their names. For I must try to
be like you in all things.”
“ Love the flowers always,” he said. “ And teach me to love
them.”
So she told him all about the flowers, how some grew very
slowly and others bloomed in a night ; how clever the convol-
vulus was at climbing, and how shy violets were, and why honey-
cups had folded petals. She told him of the birds, too, that sang

in