Directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid.  And, behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded.  He stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration.

The flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold.  He could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one.  And the insufferable scent!  How hot the place was!  The blossoms swam before his eyes.

He would see if the temperature was right.  He made a step towards the thermometer.  Suddenly everything appeared unsteady.  The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down.  Then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward.

* * * * *

At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable custom.  But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea.

“He is worshipping that horrid orchid,” she told herself, and waited ten minutes.  “His watch must have stopped.  I will go and call him.”

She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name.  There was no reply.  She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded with an intense perfume.  Then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot-water pipes.

For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless.

He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid.  The tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands.

She did not understand.  Then she saw from under one of the exultant tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood.

With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers.  She snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap dripped red.

Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel.  How they clung to him!  She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her.  She felt she was fainting, knew she must not.  She left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration.  She caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the green-house.  Then she re-entered.  She tugged now with renewed strength at Wedderburn’s motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor.  It still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim.  In a frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air.

Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the horror.