curve upward.

* * * * *

At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable
custom. But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea.

"He is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited ten
minutes. "His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him."

She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name.
There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded
with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks
between the hot-water pipes.

For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless.

He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The
tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were
crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight, with their
ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands.

She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant
tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood.

With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away
from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their
sap dripped red.

Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel.