West Indies.  They gleamed, like flames, amid a shower of cunningly arranged green leaves, and palms sheltered them from the electric rays of the ceiling.  The tentroom was a maze of tulips, in vases, in pots, in china bowls that hung by thin chains from the sloping green roof.  Few of these tulips were whole coloured.  They were slashed, and striped, and spotted with violent hues.  Some were of the most vivid scarlet streaked with black.  Others were orange-coloured with livid pink spots, circus-pink, such as you see round the eyes of horses bred specially for the ring.  There were white tulips, stained as if with blood, pale pink tulips tipped with deepest brown, rose-coloured tulips barred with wounds whose edges were saffron-hued, tulips of a warm wallflower tint dashed with the stormy yellow of an evening sky.  And hidden among those scentless flowers, in secret places cunningly contrived, were great groups of hyacinths, which poured forth their thick and decadent scent, breathing heavily their hearts into the small atmosphere of the room, and giving a strange and unnatural soul to the tulips who had spent all their efforts in the attainment of form and daring combinations of colour.  As if relapsing into sweet simplicity, after the vagaries of a wayward nature had run their course, Valentine had filled his hall and dining-room with violets, purple and white, and a bell of violets hung from the ceiling over the chair which the lady of the feathers was to occupy at dinner.  These were white only, white and virginal, flowers for some sweet woman dedicated to the service of God, or to the service of some eternal altar-flame burning, as the zeal of nature burns, through all the dawning and fading changes of the world.

Thus Valentine passed his day among flowers, and only when the last twilight of the year fell had he fixed the last blossom in its place.  Then he rested, as after six days of creation, and from the midst of his flowers saw the snow falling delicately upon London.  Lights began to gleam in the tall houses opposite his drawing-room windows.  He glanced at them, and they brought him thoughts at which he smiled.  Behind those squares of light he imagined peace and good will in enormous white waistcoats and expansive shirt-fronts, red-faced, perhaps even whiskered, getting ready for good temper and turkey, journalistic geniality and plum pudding.  And holly everywhere, with its prickly leaves and shining, phlegmatic surfaces.

Peace and good will!

He glanced at his orchids and at the red West Indian flowers, and he thought of those crawling green jungles from which they should have come, and smiled gently.

Peace and good will!

He went to dress.

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