She struggled up to a sitting posture and drew a long breath, while tears rolled over her cheeks. Both lily white hands were uplifted to prevent another application of the pungent salts.
"Don't please," she said, "you are taking away all the breath I have left."
"You deserve some such punishment for your cruelty to me," he retorts, in a very good humor with himself and her, for he feels he has done his duty in his second love affair, and if she will not marry him, why that is her own affair, and he cheerfully swallows his chagrin, and also a spice of genuine regret as he smiles down at her.
"I am going back, if you please." She steps out of the pavilion while speaking, and he attends her. As they walk silently on he gathers a flower here and there, the rarest that blow in the garden, and putting them together they grow into a graceful bouquet before they reach the house. Then he presents it with the kindest of smiles and quite ignoring the unkind cut she has given his vanity.
She takes it, thanks him, and notes with quick eyes that no roses, no white ones at least, nor pansies are there—those flowers are sacred to memory, or, perchance, remorse.
"We may be friends at least?" he queries, trying to look into the eyes that meet his unwillingly. And "always, I hope," she answers, as they reach the piazza steps.
Mrs. Winans is at the piano singing for her hostess. A dumb agony settles down on Lulu's racked heart as the rich, sweetly trained voice floats out to them as they ascend the steps, blending its music with the deep melancholy notes of old ocean in the plaintive words of an old song that is a favorite of Mrs. Conway's:
"Oh! never name departed days,
Nor vows you whispered then,
O'er which too sad a feeling plays
To trust their tones again.
Regard their shadows round you cast
As if we ne'er had met—
And thus, unmindful of the past,
We may be happy yet."
"Let us take that for an augury, little one," he says, cheerfully; "'we may be happy yet.'"