ly's shelves. "It seems
almost too good to be true," she said, sniffing the violets and smiling
at him.

"Nothing is too good to be true," he told her, "and now I have
something to ask. That you will come and see my father."

"With pleasure."

He glanced around the empty shop. "Why not now? There are no
customers--and the gray light makes things dreary--. And it is spring
in my hothouses--there are a thousand cyclamens for the one you have
lost, a thousand violets for every one on the backs of these little
elephants--narcissus and daffodils--. Why not?"

Why not, indeed? Why not, when Adventure beckoned, go to meet it? She
had tied herself for so many years to the commonplace and the practical.

And so Miss Emily closed her shop, and went in Ulrich's car, leaving a
card tucked in the shop door, "Will reopen at three."

It was at one o'clock that Dr. McKenzie came and found that door shut
against him. He shook the knob with some impatience, and stamped his
foot impotently when no one answered. His orders had come and he must
leave for France tomorrow. He had not told Jean, he had come to Emily
to ask her to break the news--.

He stood there in the snow feeling quite unexpectedly forlorn.
Heretofore he had always been able to put his finger on Emily when he
had wanted her. He had needed only to beckon and she had followed.

And how could he know that she was at that very moment following other
beckonings? That she had responded to a call that was not the call of
selfish need, but of a subtle understanding of her rare charm. Bruce
McKenzie had, perhaps, subconsciously felt that Emily would be
fortunate to have a place by his fireside, to bask in his
presence--Ulrich Stoelle leading Emily through the moist fragrance of
his hot-houses counted himself blessed by the gods to have her there.
"You see," he said, "that here it is spring."

It was indeed spring, with birds singing, not in cages, but free to fly
as they pleased; with the sound of water, as a little artificial stream
wound its way over moss-covered rocks set where it might splash and
fall over them--with ferns bending down to it and tiny flashing fish
following it.

"My father did that," Ulrich explained, "when he was younger and
stronger. But now he sits in his chair and works at his toys."

The workshop of Franz Stoelle was entered through the door of the last
hothouse; he had thus always a vista of splashing color--red and
purples and