He was out and the door shut before Letitia could answer. As the carriage rolled on she turned and through the window followed his pursuing figure with eagerly interested eyes. It was Viola. At the end of the block she turned into the florist's, where she had agreed to come and spend the evening helping Miss Gladys on some extra orders. She passed through the store into the room beyond, and, donning her black apron, was soon busy. The two girls were working and talking together when Gault stopped at the street door and swept the flower-scented interior with a searching gaze. He had done this at every shop on the block. Yet, though he went up and down, hunting in every corner, in every darkened doorway where she might possibly have sought shelter, she had disappeared as completely as if the passing glimpse of her had been a vision. Letitia had evidently made a mistake. Slowly through the rain Gault walked home to his rooms. It was two hours later when Viola started to leave the florist's. The storm was raging with all the malignant intensity of driving rain and a wind that lay in wait at corners and sprang upon the wayfarer. She made part of her journey on the electric car, but the long climb up the hill had to be accomplished on foot. About this high point the wind met few obstacles, and swept by, shouting hoarsely in the joy of its freedom. It played with Viola like a cat with a mouse--at one moment swept her forward in a sail-like spread of skirt, at the next turned upon her, buffeting her furiously back against the streaming walls, tearing at her hat, driving the rain into her face, down her neck, up her sleeves. It seized her umbrella and whisked it this way and that, while she held its handle and helplessly followed its eccentric course. When half-way up the hill she was forced to shut it, and then, angry with her for thus terminating its sport, the wind concentrated its spiteful anger upon her. It blew steadily in her face, except at the moments when she crossed an intersecting street. Then it seemed to blow from all points at once, seizing her and shaking her, whirling her about, throwing her against a gate or into the drenched, yielding leafage of a hedge, and then creeping up behind her and beating against her with a force that almost sent her on her face. Her clothes clung to her, saturated and heavy, confining her limbs with their clammy hold. The water streamed off her hat and oozed out of her shoes. Once she was forced to take shelter on a door-step, under the jutting roof of a balcony. From this she crept onward, clinging close to the walls, down which water ran in wide rills, and where long strands of creepers struck her with their wet leaves. Once in the cottage, she threw her clothes out of the window on the balcony, and crept shivering to bed.