the farther rim of the Pacific.

The steamship passed from sight; she turned from the window. The boy had
taken away the breakfast tray and had left a box on the table. It was
modest, violet-colored, with Hollywood Gardens stamped on the cover, but
she hurried with an incredulous expectancy to open it. For an instant the
perfume seemed to envelop her, then she lifted the green waxed paper, and
a soft radiance shone in her face. It was only a corsage bouquet, but the
violets, arranged with a few fronds of maidenhair, were delightfully
fresh. She took them out carefully. For a moment she held them to her
cheek. But she did not fasten them on her gown; instead she filled a
cut-glass bowl with water and set them at the open casement in the shade.
A cloud of city smoke, driving low, obscured the _Aquila_; the freighter
bound for Prince William Sound rounded Magnolia Bluff, but clearly she had
forgotten these interests; she stood looking the other way, through the
southeast window, where Rainier rose in solitary splendor. A subdued
exhilaration possessed her. Did she not in imagination travel back over
the Cascades to that road to Wenatchee, where, rising to the divide, they
had come unexpectedly on that far view of the one mountain? Then her
glance fell again to the violets, and she lifted the bowl, leaning her
cheek, her forehead, to feel the touch of the cool petals and inhale their
fragrance.

She had not looked for Tisdale's card, but presently, in disposing of the
florist's box, she found it tucked in the folds of waxed paper. He had
written across it, not very legibly, with his left hand,

"I want to beg your pardon for that mistake I made. I know you never will
put any man in David Weatherbee's place. You are going to think too much
of him. When you are ready to make his project your life work, let me
know."

She was a long time reading the note, going back to the beginning more
than once to reconsider his meaning. And her exhilaration died; the
weariness that made her suddenly older settled over her face. At last she
tore the card slowly in pieces and dropped it in the box.

Her telephone rang, and she went over and took down the receiver. "Mrs.
Weatherbee," she said, and after a moment. "Yes. Please send him up."

The bell-boy had left the door ajar, and she heard the elevator when it
stopped at her floor; a quick, nervous step sounded along the corridor,
the door swung wider to some draught, and a short, wiry