own
magnifico may be there.

Alice was almost unaware of her own reveries in which this being
appeared--reveries often so transitory that they developed and passed in
a few seconds. And in some of them the being was not wholly a stranger;
there were moments when he seemed to be composed of recognizable
fragments of young men she knew--a smile she had liked, from one; the
figure of another, the hair of another--and sometimes she thought
he might be concealed, so to say, within the person of an actual
acquaintance, someone she had never suspected of being the right seeker
for her, someone who had never suspected that it was she who "waited"
for him. Anything might reveal them to each other: a look, a turn of the
head, a singular word--perhaps some flowers upon her breast or in her
hand.

She wiped the dishes slowly, concluding the operation by dropping a
saucer upon the floor and dreamily sweeping the fragments under the
stove. She sighed and replaced the broom near a window, letting her
glance wander over the small yard outside. The grass, repulsively
besooted to the colour of coal-smoke all winter, had lately come to life
again and now sparkled with green, in the midst of which a tiny shot of
blue suddenly fixed her absent eyes. They remained upon it for several
moments, becoming less absent.

It was a violet.

Alice ran upstairs, put on her hat, went outdoors and began to search
out the violets. She found twenty-two, a bright omen--since the number
was that of her years--but not enough violets. There were no more; she
had ransacked every foot of the yard.

She looked dubiously at the little bunch in her hand, glanced at
the lawn next door, which offered no favourable prospect; then went
thoughtfully into the house, left her twenty-two violets in a bowl
of water, and came quickly out again, her brow marked with a frown of
decision. She went to a trolley-line and took a car to the outskirts of
the city where a new park had been opened.

Here she resumed her search, but it was not an easily rewarded one,
and for an hour after her arrival she found no violets. She walked
conscientiously over the whole stretch of meadow, her eyes roving
discontentedly; there was never a blue dot in the groomed expanse; but
at last, as she came near the borders of an old grove of trees, left
untouched by the municipal landscapers, the little flowers appeared, and
she began to gather them. She picked them carefully, loosening the eart