This beautiful plant has a peculiar property.

If one of its compact shining leaves be planted in the earth it takes root and grows into a shrub whose fragrant wax-like flowers diffuse an enchanting perfume.

Three years before at a jurists' ball, when Henrietta and Szilard met for the first time, he had given her a bouquet, among the flowers of which was one of these green-gold leaves, and when she got home she had planted it in a jar and it had taken root, spread its shoots abroad and grown larger and larger every year.

And Henrietta had called it Szilard and watched over its growth and cared for it as if it had been a living human creature.

For a long time she stood before this flowering plant as if she would have spoken to it and taken counsel of it.