He turned again to the fire, which glowed with blue and purple lights
behind the windows of isinglass, curling and flaming and twisting,
with fascinating brilliance. Long he sat, watching it, while the
sounds outside in the street grew less and less, and at last when he
went to the window, he found the street in darkness and in silence.
The moon had set, and his watch told him it was two o'clock.

The wind whimpered in the chimney like a lonesome puppy, rising and
falling, cying out and swelling with eerie rhythm; a soft spring wind,
he knew it was, that seemed to catch its breath like a thing in pain.

Looking again at the roses, he noticed that the leaves were drooping.
He hastily went into the dispensary and brought out two graduates
filled with water to put them in; but when he lifted them--he
saw, with poignant pain--they were gone past helping--they were
frost-bitten.

Then it was that he gathered them in his arms, with sudden passion,
and as he sat through the long night, he held them closely to him, for
kin of his they surely were--these frosted roses, on whose fragrant
young hearts the blight had so prematurely fallen!




CHAPTER IV

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