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Updated: June 4, 2025
A more formal chamber lay at his right, empty, but through an opposite door he caught the faint clatter of a spoon. Rosemary Roselle was seated, rigid and white, at the end of a table that bore a scattered array of dishes. There were shadows beneath her eyes, and her hands, on the table, were clenched.
The windows must have been closed, or nearly so; the blinds were down; there was a faint reek of perfume and spirits and stale cigarette smoke in the room; and in two narrow tumbled beds were two women, one whose head was still drowsy on her pillow, and Roselle, who sat up in a pale blue nightgown with a black ribbon girdled high about the waist, and her raven hair in a mop over her eyes.
Then he recalled a little bush of vivid red roses his mother carefully protected and cultivated; he saw their bright fragrant patch on the rocky gray expanse of the utilitarian acres; and suddenly a light of new understanding enveloped his mother's gaunt drearily-clad figure. He employed in this connection the surprising word "starved." ... Rosemary Roselle was a flower.
The fact that, penniless and without a home, he had nothing to offer was lost in the beat and surge of his feelings. He went with the smashing completeness of a heavy body, broken loose in an elemental turmoil. He wanted her; her fragrant spirit, the essence that was herself, Rosemary Roselle.
The simple question of the colored woman had largely slain it. His own personality, the vision of his forthcoming life and necessity, rose to the surface of his consciousness. Elim realized what had drawn, him to his present situation it had, of course, been the memory of Rosemary Roselle.
It happened that the only woman Osborn had taken down to Brighton for the day, before he took Roselle, was Marie; and harmless as the proceeding was, it affected him for a while as any first plunge affects a man. It was like taking a first step which signified something. As they sat at lunch, he looked around him and recognised easily the types which he saw.
It would be of no use to try to describe Bessie's joy when Tommy rushed in and put Roselle Geraldine in her arms with a breathless account of the wonderful story. But from that moment Bessie began to pick up again, and soon she was better than she had ever been and the happiest little lassie in Arundel.
She rose, and stood with a hand on Indy's shoulder, murmuring affectionately in the colored woman's ear. The sloop once more headed at a long angle for the shore. Bramant's Wharf grew visible, projecting solidly from a verdant bank. They floated silently up to the dock, and the youth held the sloop steady while Rosemary Roselle and Indy mounted from its deck.
An impulse to touch her hair was so compelling that he started back, shaken; a new discordant tumult rose within him, out of which emerged an aching hunger for Rosemary Roselle; he wanted her with a passion cold and numbing like ether. He wanted her without reason, and in the desire lost his deep caution, his rectitude of conscience. He was torn far beyond the emotional possibilities of weak men.
"What a fug!" said Osborn. "All right," said Roselle, "go away, then! I shall be an hour dressing. You'd better wait in the sitting-room; there's a Sunday paper there, and a fire if the woman's lighted it." The woman was kindling the fire hastily and grumbling when he went into the sitting-room, still in its state of early morning frowsiness.
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