For the Caribbeania had begun raking the atmosphere with hoarse calls for its dispersed passengers.
But at the wharf the launch was still fussily collecting the mails.
There was a flame-coloured azalea leaning gorgeously out of the shade of the eaves of a customs house. It was Courtesy’s colour—so obviously hers that Courtesy herself unconsciously answered its call.
“Ou—I say, that colour,” she said, and ceased, because she could not voice the echo that streamed from her heart to the azalea’s. It bent towards her like a torch blown by the wind.
“It’s autumn,” said the gardener. “And that azalea is the only thing that knows it on the island.”
“Good,” commented Mrs. Rust. “All this green greenhouse rubbish has no sense ...” she waved her hands to the palm trees that plaited their fingers over the sky in the background.
“Autumn, I think ...” began the gardener, addressing the azalea, “autumn runs into the year, crying, ‘I’m on fire, I’m on fire ...’ and yet glories all the while; just as I might say, ‘This is passion, this is passion ...’ and so it is passion, and pain as well, but I love it....”
“What a funny thing to say!” said Courtesy. “Do you say that sort of thing by mistake, you quaint boy, or do you know what you’re talking about?”
“My lips say it by mistake,” said the gardener. “But my heart knows it, especially when I see—a thing like that. Otherwise, why should I have become a gardener?”
He looked round for the suffragette to see if she had caught this spark out of his heart, and whether the same torch had set her alight. She was not there.