The big window was the window in the dining room. It was very big, a sash window, and almost square, and at the moment it was very bare, because she had taken the curtains down for washing. The garden was almost out of sight behind the rain. The yellow rosebush seemed far away, a steady blur of brightness, like a street lamp in the fog. And the other flowers, not as intimately massed around one center as the roses were, and not so strongly defined, seemed to be moving about by themselves, swimming slowly about in the wet gray air and arranging themselves in different patterns from the ones she had imagined and seen come to life as the summer wore on. This was the heaviest rain they had had for a long time and she was glad to see it — it was needed. And she was glad it had come today and not yesterday. The children would not have liked traveling in the rain. They had been looking forward to the view from the train windows. And then there would have been all that worry about damp feet and damp heads. Yes, it was fortunate the rain had held off until now.

Earlier in the day, in the morning, when she saw the rain getting heavier, she went out and cut all the full-blown and half-blown roses. She cut the white, the pink, and the red — all but the yellow. The yellow rosebush had been in the garden when she and Martin moved here, and she had a particular affection for it, because she felt it had encouraged her to set to work and make the lovely garden she had out there now. She seldom cut a yellow rose, and this year, as they bloomed, the roses on that bush had arranged themselves so marvelously that it was as though a great artist had made them grow in that certain way to match a picture he had in his mind. And so this morning she had left all the yellow roses to survive or fall together. As well as she could see, they were holding up, in a round shape that tapered slightly toward the top — a dense, delicate ball of yellow that was like a Christmas tree ornament or an Oriental roof. It was accidental, that grouping. It might never occur again. She was glad she had not disturbed them.