After John had gone away, left home, Rose had fallen into such despair that one night he had bought a hyacinth and brought it home to her in an attempt to distract her from herself, and he had never felt so silly or so conspicuous in his life as he had felt walking out of the shop and along the street with the plant between his hands. They had wrapped it around with pink paper and folded the paper into a high cone, making it look much bigger than it need have looked, and much too festive. He had tried carrying it in one hand but it wouldn’t balance. He had chosen a blue hyacinth in full bloom, and he was very anxious not to let it get bruised or broken. He had an awkward time in the tram, with both hands on the plant, and, as luck would have it, he had to stand the whole way home that evening, of all evenings. By the time he got home he was nearly angry. He had taken the pink paper off when he got into the house, and he had put it standing in the middle of the dining-room table where she would see it first thing when she came to the door to call him to his tea. She had come in and he had pretended not to notice that there was anything out of the way, and she had said, “What on earth?” and she had lifted the hyacinth off the table and put one arm around it to hold it, while with her free hand she patted the spot on the table where the damp plant had been sitting all bare with no saucer under it. “Oh, Hubert,” she said, “a lovely hyacinth. Isn’t that a lovely color of blue. But it needs water. And I’ll put it in a bigger pot. I have a big one out in the shed, the pot the poor rose geraniums died in. I’ll get it out after tea. I’ll have to find a good place for it, where it’ll have all the sun.” While she was talking, there was, in spite of the sadness that lived all over her face at that time, a little smile on her lips, a faint smile that was closed, secretive, half satisfied, you might almost say, and almost triumphant, as she talked about the hyacinth and what she would do for it. Then, of course, later on she had slipped back into the perpetual attention she paid to John’s absence from their life. The fact that he had gone to serve the Church that she was so devoted to made no difference at all in her feelings, and did not console her.