that you know all about the human brain, where I leave off!
Granted your premises, yours and Trix's and the Barkingtons', why
_don't_ you believe him? I should. Look at that woman's eyes! Try to
talk to her! Do you suppose we haven't tried? Ask Jarvyse what he's
got out of her! Get something out of her, yourself! Then ask
yourself: _if what Absolom says is so, how would she act differently
from the way she does act?_

"God! I wish I _could_ believe him!"

He struck the desk again, and it seemed to me that behind his glasses
he scorned me for the nondescript I was.

I went quickly out of the office into the corridor. I would find Mrs.
Leeth and have it out with her. I would--she stood directly in front
of me.

"Oh--how do you do!" I stammered. Her hands were full of cut flowers.

"How--how do you feel about Mr. Vail?" I demanded brusquely.

The ordinary, stocky, black-dressed figure raised its head slowly; the
eyes met mine.

And suddenly I knew that the flowers in her hands were hyacinths,
hyacinths and damp fern and mignonette. It grew and grew and
surrounded me with a penetrating cloud of rich perfume, perfume and
old, sweet memories that cut and soothed at once. I thought of the
lily-of-the-valley bed under my mother's window, and her brown, brown
eyes held mine and she--my mother, back again and smiling--filled my
heart so full that I stood drowned in the old days and listened for the
school-bell and the other children's voices!

It seemed that it had all been a mistake, a long mistake, and she had
been there all the time.... I cannot tell you how sweet and certain it
all was.

And then I knew the odour for what it was--hyacinth. Hyacinths in a
round, spaded bed, with a robin singing near, and myself picking a
stalk, and the man stepping up behind me that had blotted out all the
other men, who were mistakes and slipped away ... and yet we would not
begin again, my dearest! No, no, there is plenty of time!

And just as I was swimming back, staring at her eyes, it came over me
that there had been hyacinths on the piano, almost overpowering in the
dusk of the room that will always be nearest to me--I hope I may lie
there, dead. I was playing Chopin, and life looked so rich: the boy
was not born yet. I said, "If he should die"--but of course I couldn't
believe that he would. And then--and then it was as if he had _not_
died, after all, and I saw that this had been a mistake, too! It was