She glanced at Mr. Welles, and was surprised to find that he was looking neither at the people nor the plant.  His arm was around his favorite Paul, but his gaze seemed turned inward, as though he were thinking of something very far away.  He looked tired and old, it seemed to her, and without that quietly shining aspect of peace which she found so touching.  Perhaps he was tired.  Perhaps she ought not to have brought him out, this evening, for that long walk over rough country roads.  How much older he was than his real age in years!  His life had used him up.  There must have been some inner maladjustment in it!

There was a little stir in the company, a small inarticulate sound from Elly.  Marise saw everyone’s eyes turn to the center of the room and looked back to the plant.  The big pink bud was beginning visibly to swell.

A silence came into the room.  No one coughed, or stirred, or scraped a chair-leg.  It was as though a sound would have wounded the flower.  All those human souls bowed themselves.  Almost a light shone upon them . . . a phrase from Dante came to Marise’s mind . . . “la mia menta fu percossa da un fulgore . . .”

With a quick involuntary turn she looked at Marsh, fearing his mockery of her, “quoting the Paradiso, about Vermont farmers!” as though he could know, for all those sharp eyes of his, what was going on hidden in her mind!

All this came and went in an instant, for she now saw that one big, shining petal was slowly, slowly, but quite visibly uncurling at the tip.  From that moment on, she saw nothing, felt nothing but the opening flower, lived only in the incredibly leisurely, masterful motion with which the grotesquely shaped protecting petals curled themselves back from the center.  Their motion was so slow that the mind was lost in dreaminess in following it.  Had that last one moved?  No, it stood still, poised breathlessly . . . and yet, there before them, revealed, exultant, the starry heart of the great flower shimmered in the lamp-light.

* * * * *

Then she realized that she had not breathed.  She drew in a great marveling aspiration, and heard everyone about her do the same.  They turned to each other with inarticulate exclamations, shaking their heads wonderingly, their lips a little apart as they drew long breaths.

Two very old women, rubbing their age-dimmed eyes, stood up, tiptoed to the table, and bent above the miraculously fine texture of the flower their worn and wrinkled faces.  The petals cast a clear, rosy reflection upon their sallow cheeks.  Some of the younger mothers took their little children over to the table and lifting them up till their round shining eyes were on a level with the flower, let them gaze their fill at the mysterious splendor of stamen and pistil.

“Would you like to go quite close and look at it, children?” Marise asked her own brood.