[Shaun Gardiner]

As it says on the tin, I'm hoping someone'll be able to identify a science fiction short story I read when I was kid, around twelve or so (so it'll have been published at some point before the 1990s, maybe the 50s or 60s).

I have a feeling the story's by Ray Bradbury, but I'm not certain - I've trawled through many descriptions of his short works online and not found a match. From what I remember the story had a very elegiac mode and a highly dense, poetic manner dissimilar from the other Bradbury works I know.

(The following details are all hazy, I may have one or more of them incorrect.) The story concerns a man and a woman who live in a grand mansion, near a lake. Around the grounds of the house as they descend towards the lake grow strange flowers which, if I remember correctly, are crystalline in appearance. Whenever a flower is plucked it has the effect of altering the pace of local time, so that events beyond the lake occur at a much-reduced rate.

There is a rebellion or popular coup happening in the country wherein the story takes place, and a rampaging mob is approaching the house where the man and woman live. No doubt of their intentions - when the mob arrives both man and woman will be for the chop. They pick flowers at periodic intervals, so as to slow the mob's approach, but the flowers are running very low in number when the story opens, and the last one may be plucked during its narration, I'm not certain.

And that's about it. I'm so hazy on the details and I've been unsuccessful at tracking the story down for so long that I'm wondering if I actually made it up, or am confusing it with a dream or some such thing. To the extent that I'm thinking of taking a risk and (re)writing the damn thing myself...

So, can anyone help?