So there she stood in her grand Sevres pot, and she was ready to cry with the poet, “The world may end tonight!” Alas! it was not the world which was to end.  Let me hasten to close this true heart-rending history.

There was a great dinner as the sun began to set, and the mistress of the house came in on the arm of the great foreign prince; and what did the foreign prince do but look up at Rosa, straight up at her, and over the heads of the azaleas, and say to his hostess:  “What a beautiful rose you have there!  A Niphetos, is it not?”

And her mistress, who had known her long as simple Rosa Damascena, answered, “Yes, sir; it is a Niphetos.”

Oh, to have lived for that hour!  The silly thing thought it worth all her suffering from the gardener’s knife, all the loss of her robust health and delightful power of flowering in all four seasons.  She was a Niphetos, really and truly a Niphetos! and not one syllable hinted as to her origin!  She began to believe she had been born a tea rose!

The dinner was long and gorgeous; the guests were dazzling in jewels and in decorations; the table was loaded with old plate and rare china; the prince made a speech and used her as a simile of love and joy and purity and peace.  The rose felt giddy with triumph and with the fumes of the wines around her.  Her vase was of purple and gold, and all the voices round her said, “Oh, the beautiful rose!” No one noticed the azaleas.  How she wished that the blackbird could see for a minute, if the cat would gobble him up the next!

The day sped on; the chatelaine and her guests went away; the table was rearranged; the rose tree was left in its place of honor; the lights were lit; there was the sound of music near at hand; they were dancing in other chambers.

Above her hung a chandelier—­a circle of innumerable little flames and drops that looked like dew or diamonds.  She thought it was the sun come very close.  After it had been there a little while it grew very hot, and its rays hurt her.

“Can you not go a little farther away, O Sun?” she said to it.  It was flattered at being taken for the sun, but answered her:  “I am fixed in my place.  Do you not understand astronomy?”

She did not know what astronomy was, so was silent, and the heat hurt her.  Still, she was in the place of honor:  so she was happy.

People came and went; but nobody noticed her.  They ate and drank, they laughed and made love, and then went away to dance again, and the music went on all night long, and all night long the heat of the chandelier poured down on her.

“I am in the place of honor,” she said to herself a thousand times in each hour.

But the heat scorched her, and the fumes of the wines made her faint.  She thought of the sweet fresh air of the old garden where the Banksiae were.  The garden was quite near, but the windows were closed, and there were the walls now between her and it.  She was in the place of honor.  But she grew sick and waxed faint as the burning rays of the artificial light shining above her seemed to pierce through and through her like lances of steel.  The night seemed very long.  She was tired.