And mingled with the dry scent of dust was the sweet fragrance of new-mown hay.
Far off a light twinkled or it might have been a star.
Swann put his arm around Rose.

She did not shrink--she did not repulse him--she did not move.

Something strange happened in her mind or heart.

It was that moment she fell.
And she fell wide-eyed, knowing what she was doing, not in a fervor of excitement, without pleasure or passion, bitterly sure that it was better to be with some one she could not like than to be alone forever.

The wrong to herself lay only in the fact that she could not care..