He struck the desk again, and it seemed to me that behind his glasses he scorned me for the nondescript I was.
I went quickly out of the office into the corridor. I would find Mrs. Leeth and have it out with her. I would—she stood directly in front of me.
"Oh—how do you do!" I stammered. Her hands were full of cut flowers.
"How—how do you feel about Mr. Vail?" I demanded brusquely.
The ordinary, stocky, black-dressed figure raised its head slowly; the eyes met mine.
And suddenly I knew that the flowers in her hands were hyacinths, hyacinths and damp fern and mignonette. It grew and grew and surrounded me with a penetrating cloud of rich perfume, perfume and old, sweet memories that cut and soothed at once. I thought of the lily-of-the-valley bed under my mother's window, and her brown, brown eyes held mine and she—my mother, back again and smiling—filled my heart so full that I stood drowned in the old days and listened for the school-bell and the other children's voices!
It seemed that it had all been a mistake, a long mistake, and she had been there all the time.... I cannot tell you how sweet and certain it all was.
And then I knew the odour for what it was—hyacinth. Hyacinths in a round, spaded bed, with a robin singing near, and myself picking a stalk, and the man stepping up behind me that had blotted out all the other men, who were mistakes and slipped away ... and yet we would not begin again, my dearest! No, no, there is plenty of time!
And just as I was swimming back, staring at her eyes, it came over me that there had been hyacinths on the piano, almost overpowering in the dusk of the room that will always be nearest to me—I hope I may lie there, dead. I was playing Chopin, and life looked so rich: the boy was not born yet. I said, "If he should die"—but of course I couldn't believe that he would. And then—and then it was as if he had not died, after all, and I saw that this had been a mistake, too! It was so calm, so simple—no shock at all. Why had I never known? And all this while the girls and I had kept flowers on that tiny, tiny grave! I must tell his father....
She dropped her eyes to the hyacinths and I put my hand on a chair to steady myself. My cheeks were all wet.