The bluest eyes in the world, she told herself sternly, could not trouble her fancy to-day, nor could the wildest romance quicken her pulses.
A wagon, filled with blue and white hyacinths, passed by in the street, and while she watched it, there flashed into her mind, with the swiftness of light, a memory of the evening when she had broken her engagement to Arthur.

All her life he had loved her, and, but for an accident, she might have married him.

If she had not seen George at Florrie's party--if she had not seen him under a yellow lantern, with the glow in his eyes, and a dreamy waltz floating from the arbour of roses at the end of the garden--if this had not happened, she would have married Arthur instead of George, and her whole life would have been different.

Because of a single instant, because of a chance meeting, she had wrecked the happiness of three lives.

Now, when the bloom had dropped from her love, it was impossible for her to gather the withered leaves and bare stems in her hands and find any fragrance about them; it was impossible for her to understand how or why she had followed so fleeting an impulse.