A bell-boy stood holding a rare scarlet azalea in full flower.  In its jardiniere of Satsuma ware it was all his arms could compass, and a second boy followed with the costly Japanese stand that accompanied it.  There was no need to read the name on the card tied conspicuously among the stiff leaves.  The gift was from Frederic Morganstein.  It had arrived, doubtless, on an Oriental steamer that had docked the previous evening while the Aquila made her landing.  Mrs. Weatherbee had the plant placed where the sunshine reached it through the window of the alcove, and it made a gay showing against the subdued gray of the walls.  Involuntarily her glance moved from it to the harbor, seeking the Minnesota, now under full headway off Magnolia Bluff.  It was as though, in that moment, her imagination out-traveled the powerful liner, and she saw before her that alluring country set on the farther rim of the Pacific.

The steamship passed from sight; she turned from the window.  The boy had taken away the breakfast tray and had left a box on the table.  It was modest, violet-colored, with Hollywood Gardens stamped on the cover, but she hurried with an incredulous expectancy to open it.  For an instant the perfume seemed to envelop her, then she lifted the green waxed paper, and a soft radiance shone in her face.  It was only a corsage bouquet, but the violets, arranged with a few fronds of maidenhair, were delightfully fresh.  She took them out carefully.  For a moment she held them to her cheek.  But she did not fasten them on her gown; instead she filled a cut-glass bowl with water and set them at the open casement in the shade.  A cloud of city smoke, driving low, obscured the Aquila; the freighter bound for Prince William Sound rounded Magnolia Bluff, but clearly she had forgotten these interests; she stood looking the other way, through the southeast window, where Rainier rose in solitary splendor.  A subdued exhilaration possessed her.  Did she not in imagination travel back over the Cascades to that road to Wenatchee, where, rising to the divide, they had come unexpectedly on that far view of the one mountain?  Then her glance fell again to the violets, and she lifted the bowl, leaning her cheek, her forehead, to feel the touch of the cool petals and inhale their fragrance.

She had not looked for Tisdale’s card, but presently, in disposing of the florist’s box, she found it tucked in the folds of waxed paper.  He had written across it, not very legibly, with his left hand,

“I want to beg your pardon for that mistake I made.  I know you never will put any man in David Weatherbee’s place.  You are going to think too much of him.  When you are ready to make his project your life work, let me know.”

She was a long time reading the note, going back to the beginning more than once to reconsider his meaning.  And her exhilaration died; the weariness that made her suddenly older settled over her face.  At last she tore the card slowly in pieces and dropped it in the box.