"Well, are blessings so numerous that one can throw them aside broadcast? Do we not need such visions as these to take us through the ice and snow and gray skies of a stinging winter day?"
"With your house at eighty degrees and tropical plants in every corner?"
"You are resolved not to approve of my laying up treasure. I breathe delight with every waft of fragrance, and though you may not believe it, the natural has a charm for me. I have been slowly studying it for a year. Is it a symptom of second childhood,—this love of olden pleasures, this longing to retrace?" and she raises her slow-moving eyes, letting them rest a moment on his face.
"Hardly, in your case," and he smiles.
She likes him to study her as he is gravely doing now. She has not posed for him, and yet she thought of him when she came out and settled herself.
"I have a favor to ask," he says, presently, and it would sound abrupt if the voice were less finely modulated.
"I am in a mood which is either indolent or generous. Try me."
Floyd Grandon prefers his request. It is never any direct aid or benefit to himself. Has this man no little friendly needs?
"Of course," she says. "Then I shall be sure of you as a spectator of the pageant. I was not at all certain you would honor me, since Mrs. Grandon does not participate in Germans."
"But I think she would like them," he says. "I suppose disparity in marriages is generally condemned for kindred reasons, one has gone by the heyday of youth, and the other should be in it. Almost I am tempted to try a German. Would Latimer keep me in countenance, I wonder?"