disappointment.

"An' why flowers?" asked Dennis.

"Listen!" answered the lady with a slight return of her original
sadness.

"Eleven months ago I was left a widow.

"My husband's estate consisted of a moderate amount of life insurance, a
prosperous business, and no debts.

"He was a florist.

"The establishment is located in the heart of a very fashionable
district.

"There has scarcely been a function of the elite in this section which
my husband has not supplied with floral decorations.

"His taste was exquisite, and his taste was his undoing, for he added
refinement to refinement until he began to lose sight of the practical
side of existence.

"By degrees he became as attenuated as some of the tendrils he
cultivated with such absorption, and as frail as an orchid.

"The intrusion of a pronounced scent was sufficient to induce a serious
nervous disturbance, and he could no more endure disproportionate and
sharp distinctions of color than a lapidary could tolerate a serious
unevenness of facets.

"I was compelled to paper his room with a delicate shade of lavender.

"The furniture was stained a light buff, and the upholstering was a
delicate cretonne livened by exquisite tracings of wisteria.

"The carpet was light blue, surrounded by a border of deeper blue,
lightly emphasized by suggestions of trailing arbutus.

"Despite all this," continued the lady sadly as she paused to enjoy an
intentness of interest on the part of the bewildered Dennis, so profound
that the dickey backs had been permitted to fall unregarded to the
ground, and their printed extravagances, by contrast with this unusual
recital, relegated to the most prosaic of occurrences, "despite all
these precautions, the most carefully guarded recesses are not entirely
secure.

"For one day an elaborately protected package arrived during my absence,
and my husband opened it.

"At once a pungent, overpowering sweetness filled the air, and the very
surfeit of its fragrance threw my husband into a convulsion of delight
which ended in a stupor so replete that we were able only to restore the
poor man to consciousness by hypodermics of--what was to him a most
violent stimulant--Cambric Tea."

Dennis looked his astonishment at these accumulating refinements, and in
the pause that followed the narration of this last episode he inquired,
with the appreciative hesitation of one who is reluctant to advance lest
he destroy the dew-gemmed tracery