Quote

"After putting down the telephone the eighty-two-year-old birthday boy sat for a long time looking at the pretty but meaningless flower whose name he did not yet know.  Then he looked up at the wall above his desk.  There hung forty-three pressed flowers in their frames.  Four rows of ten, and one at the bottom with four.  In the top row one was missing from the ninth slot.  Desert Snow would be number fourty-four. 
          Without warning he began to weep.  Surprising himself with this sudden burst of emotion after almost fourty years." Page 7