What could do that? Something that reached the center; not many things
could; something, perhaps, that kept battering at it for a long time, and
just shook it at first, and then--

It was too dreadful to think of it that way. She tried to make
herself stop.

The girl's face was turned to the out-of-doors; to a great tree in
front of the window, a tree in which some robins had built their nests.
Such a tired face! So many tear marks, and so much less reachable than
tear stains.

A beautiful face, too. If all were back which the blow at the center had
struck away, if she had all of her--if lighted--it would be a rarely
beautiful face.

The girl was like a flower; a flower, it seemed to Kate, which had not
been planted in the right place. The gardener had been unwise in his
selection of a place for this flower; perhaps he had not used the right
kind of soil, perhaps he had put it in the full heat of the sun when it
was a flower to have more shade; perhaps too much wind or too much
rain--Katie wondered just what the mistake had been. For the flower would
have been so lovely had the gardener not made those mistakes.

Even now, it was lovely: lovely with a saddening loveliness, for one saw
at a glance how easily a breeze too rough could beat it down. And one
knew there had been those breezes. Every petal drooped.

A strange desire entered the heart of Katherine: a desire to see whether
those petals could take their curves again, whether a color which