“I stopped on my way from the station to buy all the flowers I could find to send with this note. I chose spring blossoms because they are so much like you.
“I am waiting with mad impatience for your answer. Do not regard my love lightly. It springs from the unspent passions, the unfulfilled ideals of a lifetime. Oh, my dear, speed your answer back to me. Say I may come to you—now.
“Yours to eternity,
“John Marble.”
It was three o’clock in the afternoon before the fog lifted. It vanished before the piercing rays of the bright spring sun. At the windows of the Palace Hotel little rays of sunlight struck aslant the glass as though merrily demanding admission. They poured through the windows of John Marble’s room and illumined his face as he, with trembling fingers, opened a note a messenger had brought. A single sunbeam fell on the paper, blurring the lines so that he shifted it to read:
“600 Pacific Avenue,
Wednesday afternoon.
“Mr. John Marble,
“Dear Sir:
“We put your flowers on her coffin to-day. She was like the spring blossoms which she loved. They hold your letter to her buried in the depths of their bloom. She had made my life a heaven for five bright months. I am trying to bear God’s will.
“Her husband,