"I can see them perfectly from here," answered that gentleman. "They are like tremendous camellias."
"When they are in bloom, and all the sweet-bays too, it is superb," said Garda; "then is the time to come here, the perfume is enchanting."
"Too dense," said the Doctor, shaking his head disapprovingly; "it's fairly intoxicating."
"That is what I mean," Garda responded. "It's as near as I can come to it, you know; I have always thought I should love to be intoxicated."
"What is your idea of it?" said Winthrop, speaking immediately, in order to prevent the Doctor from speaking; for he saw that this gentleman was gazing at Garda with amazement, and divined the solemnity his words would assume after he should have got his breath back.
"I hardly know how to describe my idea," Garda was answering. "It's a delicious forgetting of everything that is tiresome, an enthusiasm that makes you feel as if you could do anything—that takes you way above stupid people. Stupid people are worse than thieves."
"You describe the intoxication, or rather, to give it a better name, the inspiration of genius," said Winthrop; "all artists feel this inspiration at times—musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, all who have in them a spark, great or small, of the creative fire; even I, when with such persons—as by good fortune I have been once or twice—have been able to comprehend a little of it, have caught, by reflection at least, a tinge of its glow."
"Oh, if you have felt it, it is not at all what I mean," answered Garda, with one of her sudden laughs. She drew her hand from his arm, and walked down the slope across the lower level towards the magnolias.
As soon as her back was turned, Dr. Kirby tapped Winthrop on the back impressively, and raising himself on tiptoe, spoke in his ear. "She has never, sir, been near—I may say, indeed, that she has never seen—an intoxicated person in her life." He then came down to earth again, and folding his arms, surveyed the northerner challengingly.
"Of course I understood that," Winthrop answered.