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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 1, No. 17 July 27, 1938

Sacrifice

Sacrifice

Slowly, gracefully, cruelly, one by one she tore the gleaming petals from a flower until, long afterwards, only the royal pistil and golden-dusted stamens were left; and one pure, lovely, lonely petal.

Silence, She gazed through the ruins of the flower into a golden space beyond, then spoke, and although she spoke but in a whisper, with a gay defiance she flung her words into the stillness, and they thundered into that intensity of silence. Her voice was crystal-faint, as the echo of a sigh in the trumpet of a daffodil.

The black and white restraint of Peter's suit cut clearly against the subtle shadings of her clinging gown. Very still, he lay beside her, his head resting upon her breast.

"I——," she said, then paused; and her lips were vivid as dusky crimson cherries in the still room. The smoke from her cigarette wavered up and up in a twisting haze that fascinated Peter. "That lily is my life. I, the golden pistil; my desires around me, my stamens; and you—you are the last of my lovers." With a detached and frozen calm her tinted nails destroyed that lonely petal. "Innocent in the purity of their virginity, youthful idealists, each in turn has known love, and life, with me, until I disillusioned him—even as you."

She crushed the tortured flower upon the polished table, and flicked the ash from her cigarette.

It seemed to Peter that all the room was falling into blue smoke, that he swooned among the cloying fading perfume of the great white lilies, while the fragrant echoes of her voice lingered on and on in a hushed and golden clarity.

—a.