“Bell-shaped calyx?” she began.  “Five petals of the corollary partly united?  Why, it must be some relation to the Mexican rain-tree,” she mumbled without enthusiasm.  “Leaves—­alternate, bi-pinnate, very typically—­few foliate,” she continued.  “Why, it’s a—­a Pithecolobium.”

“Sure enough,” said Edgarton.  “That’s what I thought all the time.”

As one eminently relieved of all future worry in the matter, he jumped up, pushed away his microscopic work, and, grabbing up the biggest book on the table, bolted unceremoniously for an easy chair.

Indifferently for a moment little Eve Edgarton stood watching him.  Then heavily, like a sleepy, insistent puppy dog, she shambled across the room and, climbing up into her father’s lap, shoved aside her father’s book, and burrowed her head triumphantly back into the lean, bony curve of his shoulder, her whole yawning interest centered apparently in the toes of her father’s slippers.

Then so quietly that it scarcely seemed abrupt, “Father,” she asked, “was my mother—­beautiful?”

“What?” gasped Edgarton.  “What?”

Bristling with a grave sort of astonishment he reached up nervously and stroked his daughter’s hair.  “Your mother,” he winced.  “Your mother was—­to me—­the most beautiful woman that ever lived!  Such expression!” he glowed.  “Such fire!  But of such a spiritual modesty!  Of such a physical delicacy!  Like a rose,” he mused, “like a rose—­that should refuse to bloom for any but the hand that gathered it.”

Languorously from some good practical pocket little Eve Edgarton extracted a much be-frilled chocolate bonbon and sat there munching it with extreme thoughtfulness.  Then, “Father,” she whispered, “I wish I was like—­Mother.”

“Why?” asked Edgarton, wincing.

“Because Mother’s—­dead,” she answered simply.

Noisily, like an over conscious throat, the tiny traveling-clock on the mantelpiece began to swallow its moments.  One moment—­two moments—­three—­four—­five—­six moments—­seven moments—­on, on, on, gutturally, laboriously—­thirteen—­fourteen—­fifteen—­even twenty; with the girl still nibbling at her chocolate, and the man still staring off into space with that strange little whimper of pain between his pale, shrewd eyes.

It was the man who broke the silence first.  Precipitately he shifted his knees and jostled his daughter to her feet.

“Eve,” he said, “you’re awfully spleeny to-night!  I’m going to bed.”  And he stalked off into his own room, slamming the door behind him.

Once again from the middle of the floor little Eve Edgarton stood staring blankly after her father.  Then she dawdled across the room and opened his door just wide enough to compass the corners of her mouth.

“Father,” she whispered, “did Mother know that she was a rose—­before you were clever enough to find her?”

“N—­o,” faltered her father’s husky voice.  “That was the miracle of it.  She never even dreamed—­that she was a rose—­until I found her.”