Overhead the darkening sky that held in the west the thin gray crescent of the coming moon.
And all through the garden the first dull blue shadows of evening. Shadows that blurred around the shapes of flowers; shadows that spread over the flowers, smearing out the spotting color of them until they were a gloom-splotched, ghostly mass. Shadows that brought out in all its pungent power the assailing, suffocating smell of the flowers.
He stood there waiting.
He could feel his heartbeats throbbing in his temples. His breath came in long racking gasps. His one thought was to breathe regularly. One—two—He tried to think of something other than his breathing. The intangible odor of the flowers choked him with their stealthy cunning.
It was always like this at first. He had always to contend silently and with all his strength against this illusive, abominated thing poured out to him by the flowers.
His strangling intaking of breath. One—two—
Never in all his life had he been without his horror of flowers; never until now had he known why he hated them. Lately he had begun to wonder if they hated him.
It would be better when she came.
They were her flowers. Her flowers that took all her time; all her thoughts; all her caring and affection. Her flowers that grew all about her. Her flowers that held her away from him. He hated her flowers.
One. Two.