Lavender - Devotion and distrust.
She's away from work for several days, which is odd because she comes to work every day ten minutes early and stays ten minutes late every day. He sees her watching carefully as each person passes through her department, waiting for them to even seem to need something. So he knows there's something wrong when she doesn't show up for work for four days.
He does not see, but rather hear of the unpleasant bruise she sports across her cheekbone and it fills him with a incomprehensible rage to some unknown party who has broken her. The other two accessory assistants - he can never remember their names - laugh and snicker about it, making snide remarks at her expense.
When he does see her she is not strong or happy, she does not have the bearing of her colleagues and peers, indeed he rather thinks she resembles Miss Bunting, someone old who has been worn down by life to the utmost. The mark is yellowing at the edges but is still strongly purple in the middle, barely disguised by the now-faded powder. And yet, despite all this she is beautiful.
When he comes up to her she looks apprehensive and opens her mouth with what he can tell is some half-hearted excuse formed on her lips, so he does not ask about it, instead he queries her on something else entirely.
She stares at the perfumes in wonder, rather like a child in front of la Tour Eiffel, amazed, and he thinks that it is all she sees, she does not see the incredible feats of engineering it took to achieve such great heights. But, as always, she surprises him, remarking on the seeming untouchability of the displays, yet he does not see her eyes wander to a particular scent and he wonders if she wears any at all. He asks, and she blushes but nods.
Lavender, she says, and he just has to know, because it it so simple, so perfect, yet it brings her together with a final flourish, then someone interrupts and the moment is broken, she walks away and life goes on.
(Henri can't decide whether he hates the colour purple or not.)