Thus, as if to challenge the poet’s flaunt at romance and to punish him for his recreancy to the undying spirit of youth and beauty, this vision had dawned upon him with a thrilling and accusive power.  And so metabolic was the power that in an instant the atoms of Ravenel’s entire world were redistributed.  The laden drays that passed the house in which she lived rumbled a deep double-bass to the tune of love.  The newsboys’ shouts were the notes of singing birds; that garden was the pleasance of the Capulets; the janitor was an ogre; himself a knight, ready with sword, lance or lute.

Thus does romance show herself amid forests of brick and stone when she gets lost in the city, and there has to be sent out a general alarm to find her again.

At four in the afternoon Ravenel looked out across the garden.  In the window of his hopes were set four small vases, each containing a great, full-blown rose—­red and white.  And, as he gazed, she leaned above them, shaming them with her loveliness and seeming to direct her eyes pensively toward his own window.  And then, as though she had caught his respectful but ardent regard, she melted away, leaving the fragrant emblems on the window-sill.

Yes, emblems!—­he would be unworthy if he had not understood.  She had read his poem, “The Four Roses”; it had reached her heart; and this was its romantic answer.  Of course she must know that Ravenel, the poet, lived there across her garden.  His picture, too, she must have seen in the magazines.  The delicate, tender, modest, flattering message could not be ignored.

Ravenel noticed beside the roses a small flowering-pot containing a plant.  Without shame he brought his opera-glasses and employed them from the cover of his window-curtain.  A nutmeg geranium!

With the true poetic instinct he dragged a book of useless information from his shelves, and tore open the leaves at “The Language of Flowers.”

“Geranium, Nutmeg—­I expect a meeting.”

So!  Romance never does things by halves.  If she comes back to you she brings gifts and her knitting, and will sit in your chimney-corner if you will let her.

And now Ravenel smiled.  The lover smiles when he thinks he has won.  The woman who loves ceases to smile with victory.  He ends a battle; she begins hers.  What a pretty idea to set the four roses in her window for him to see!  She must have a sweet, poetic soul.  And now to contrive the meeting.

A whistling and slamming of doors preluded the coming of Sammy Brown.

Ravenel smiled again.  Even Sammy Brown was shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance.  Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration of Ravenel—­the broker’s clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor to the poet’s sombre apartment.

Sammy went to his old seat by the window, and looked out over the dusty green foliage in the garden.  Then he looked at his watch, and rose hastily.