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 blunders had faded could come back to its own.

She was like the new gardener eager to see whether he can redeem the mistakes of the old.

And the new gardener's zeal is not all for the flower; some of it is to show what he can do, and much of it the true gardener's passion for experiment.

Katie Jones would have made a good gardener.
And yet it was something less cold than the experimenting instinct tightened her throat as she looked at the frail figure of the girl for whom life had been too much.
"I must go now," she was saying, with what seemed mighty effort to summon all of herself over which she could get command.

"You are all right now.
I must go." But she sank back in the chair, as if that one thing left at the center pulled her back, crying out that if it could but have a little more time there-- The girl in blue linen was sitting at the feet of the girl in pink organdie.