“A room?” she echoed, hopelessly bewildered.

“Yes. Or, at the most, in a garden, or on a road. Never in the real country like this.”

“Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean? I have never felt anything of the sort. You talk as if I was a kind of poetess sort of person.”

“I don’t know that you aren’t. I connect you with a view—a certain type of view. Why shouldn’t you connect me with a room?”

She reflected a moment, and then said, laughing:

“Do you know that you’re right? I do. I must be a poetess after all. When I think of you it’s always as in a room. How funny!”

To her surprise, he seemed annoyed.

“A drawing-room, pray? With no view?”

“Yes, with no view, I fancy. Why not?”

“I’d rather,” he said reproachfully, “that you connected me with the open air.”