COMMUTER'S WIFE 263 



are in bloom, and the humming-birds only leave 

 the feast the long-tubed flowers offer when dusk 

 and the hawk moths appear together. 



Is there anything more intoxicating than a great 

 bowl of pink, red, and white roses that have been 

 picked before the dew dries, all fringed and 

 wreathed with honeysuckle? They go to my head 

 as wine might, and when I bury my face in them 

 I feel moved to dance and sing like a bacchante. 

 I am a pagan these days, dazzled with colour, 

 moved by sensations not logic, and ruled by the 

 god Outdoors. Father says, however, that I am 

 not a pagan at heart, but a Christian pantheist like 

 himself, and moreover affirms it to be the most 

 wholesome and sane of beliefs. 



Evan carries a bouquet of roses to town daily, 

 the name of Maypole which he acquired in lily- 

 of-the-valley time still adhering to him. Some of 

 the other commuters, hoi polloi with crumby chins 

 and egg on their mustaches, cannot understand 

 what a man, full grown, broad shouldered, and six 

 feet in height, without symptoms of softening of 

 the brain, should want with a perpetual bouquet 

 The man in question, considering it purely his own 

 business, does not enlighten them by saying that 

 he cares so much about having flowers on his 



