"I put your name down for this one myself," she confessed to him a few moments later. "Do you mind?"
Did he? The evening wore away but too soon; he held her to him a little while, only over-quickly to be obliged to yield her to another. And now, after a third period of waiting, the time came for their last dance. He went for it as soon as the number preceding was over; he wanted, not only to miss none of it, but he hungered to snatch all the prelude he could. The conventional-looking young personage she had been dancing with regarded the approaching Mr. Heatherbloom rather resentfully, but he moved straight as an arrow for her. At once she stepped toward him, and he soon found himself walking with her across the smooth shining floor, on into the great conservatory. Here were soft shadows and wondrous perfumes. Mr. Heatherbloom breathed deeply.
"But a few days more, and we're en route for home." It was the girl who spoke first—lightly, gaily—though there was a thrill in her tones.
He started and did not answer at once. "That will be great, won't it?" His voice, too, was light, but it did not seem so spontaneously glad as her own.
"You are pleased, aren't you?" she said suddenly.
"Pleased? Of course!"
A brief period of inexplicable constraint! He looked at one of her hands resting on the edge of a great vase—at a flower she held in her fingers.
"May I?" he said, and just touched it.
"Of course!" she laughed. "A modest request, after all you've done for me!"
Her fingers placed it in the rented coat.