Her friend the Kearney Street florist, to whom the colonel in his grand days had given many profitable orders, was glad to help the daughter of his old patron. Once again Viola found herself supplying his shops with the delicate ferns which grew so luxuriantly under her intelligent care. Besides this, he now and then engaged her to assist in making up floral pieces used in decoration and at weddings and funerals. In this branch of the work she displayed so much taste and skill that her services were employed more and more constantly. She earned enough to supply her small wants, and the remains of the thousand dollars lay untouched in the bottom of her trunk. As the winter began, with its early darkening of the days, its long gray spells of lowering weather, and its first warm, hesitating rains, Viola spent hours in the small room behind the store in Kearney Street, surrounded by flowers mounted on wire stalks, which she stuck into the mossy mold that filled in the skeleton frames. When the work was heavy she was assisted by the girl who waited in the shop--a self-confident, talkative young woman, whom every one called "Miss Gladys," and who had the most improbably golden hair and the most astonishingly high collars Viola had ever seen. Nevertheless, the confidential chatter of Miss Gladys, which ranged over a variety of topics, not the least of which was Miss Gladys's own conquering charm and its fatal power, had a salutary effect in diverting Viola from her brooding melancholy. Her hours in the shop and greenhouse acted as preservatives of her physical health and mental freshness. Here she felt safe from observation, and worked on, with mind engrossed and fingers busy, through the long gray afternoons till the dark fell and the early night was spangled with garlands of lamps. In the off hours, when her plants did not need her attention and there was no work for her at the store, she took long walks. That portion of the city where she had hidden herself grew as familiar to her as the old one on the other side of town. Its charm of a ruinous picturesqueness, of a careless intermingling of alien races, of a sprawling, slovenly serenity through days drenched by sun and swept by rain, was slowly revealed to her. Aspects of it grew to have expressions of almost human attraction or repulsion. This little blue glimpse of sea invited her, with its suggestion of freedom and space. That lowering alley, dark and furtive, with reluctant rays of sunshine slanting down its walls, and the gleam of eyes watching from behind its stealthy shutters, inspired her imagination to strange, soaring flights.