show herself amid forests of brick and stone when
she gets lost in the city, and there has to be sent out a general
alarm to find her again.

At four in the afternoon Ravenel looked out across the garden. In
the window of his hopes were set four small vases, each containing a
great, full-blown rose--red and white. And, as he gazed, she leaned
above them, shaming them with her loveliness and seeming to direct
her eyes pensively toward his own window. And then, as though she had
caught his respectful but ardent regard, she melted away, leaving the
fragrant emblems on the window-sill.

Yes, emblems!--he would be unworthy if he had not understood. She had
read his poem, "The Four Roses"; it had reached her heart; and this
was its romantic answer. Of course she must know that Ravenel, the
poet, lived there across her garden. His picture, too, she must have
seen in the magazines. The delicate, tender, modest, flattering
message could not be ignored.

Ravenel noticed beside the roses a small flowering-pot containing a
plant. Without shame he brought his opera-glasses and employed them
from the cover of his window-curtain. A nutmeg geranium!

With the true poetic instinct he dragged a book of useless
information from his shelves, and tore open the leaves at "The
Language of Flowers."

"Geranium, Nutmeg--I expect a meeting."

So! Romance never does things by halves. If she comes back to you she
brings gifts and her knitting, and will sit in your chimney-corner if
you will let her.

And now Ravenel smiled. The lover smiles when he thinks he has won.
The woman who loves ceases to smile with victory. He ends a battle;
she begins hers. What a pretty idea to set the four roses in her
window for him to see! She must have a sweet, poetic soul. And now to
contrive the meeting.

A whistling and slamming of doors preluded the coming of Sammy Brown.

Ravenel smiled again. Even Sammy Brown was shone upon by the
far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his
horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending
admiration of Ravenel--the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to
the new, bright unseen visitor to the poet's sombre apartment.

Sammy went to his old seat by the window, and looked out over the
dusty green foliage in the garden. Then he looked at his watch, and
rose hastily.

"By grabs!" he exclaimed. "Twenty after four! I can't stay, old man;
I've got a date at 4:30."

"Why di