I bent down. It was a young, barely-budded rose.
Two hours before I had seen that same rose on her
breast.
I carefully picked up the flower which had fallen
in the mire, and returning to the drawing-room, I
laid it on the table, in front of her arm-chair.
And now, at last, she returned, and traversing the
whole length of the room with her light footsteps,
she seated herself at the table.
Her face had grown pale and animated; swiftly, with
merry confusion, her lowered eyes, which seemed to
have grown smaller, darted about in all directions.
She caught sight of the rose, seized it, glanced at
its crumpled petals, glanced at me—and
her eyes, coming to a sudden halt, glittered with
tears.
“What are you weeping about?” I asked.
“Why, here, about this rose. Look what
has happened to it.”
At this point I took it into my head to display profundity
of thought.
“Your tears will wash away the mire,”
I said with a significant expression.
“Tears do not wash, tears scorch,” she
replied, and, turning toward the fireplace, she tossed
the flower into the expiring flame.
“The fire will scorch it still better than tears,”
she exclaimed, not without audacity,—and
her beautiful eyes, still sparkling with tears, laughed
boldly and happily.
I understood that she had been scorched also.
In the mire, on damp, stinking straw, under the pent-house
of an old carriage-house which had been hastily converted
into a field military hospital in a ruined Bulgarian
hamlet, she had been for more than a fortnight dying
of typhus fever.
She was unconscious—and not a single physician
had even glanced at her; the sick soldiers whom she
had nursed as long as she could keep on her feet rose
by turns from their infected lairs, in order to raise
to her parched lips a few drops of water in a fragment
of a broken jug.
She was young, handsome; high society knew her; even
dignitaries inquired about her. The ladies envied
her, the men courted her ... two or three men loved
her secretly and profoundly. Life smiled upon
her; but there are smiles which are worse than tears,
A tender, gentle heart ... and such strength, such
a thirst for sacrifice! To help those who needed
help ... she knew no other happiness ... she knew
no other and she tasted no other. Every other
happiness passed her by. But she had long since
become reconciled to that, and all flaming with the
fire of inextinguishable faith, she dedicated herself
to the service of her fellow-men. What sacred
treasures she held hidden there, in the depths of
her soul, in her own secret recesses, no one ever
knew—and now no one will ever know.
And to what end? The sacrifice has been made
... the deed is done.
But it is sorrowful to think that no one said “thank
you” even to her corpse, although she herself
was ashamed of and shunned all thanks.
