“It must be one a day.”
“Must?” she repeated with a tinge of emphasis and a slight lifting of her brows.
“Pardon me, should was what I meant to say. I shall soon begin to think you a miser. Perhaps if I look out into the garden some moonlight night I shall see you here counting your roses, as a miser counts his gold.”
She smiled at the picture he drew. Then, tossing some loose petals from her hand with a gesture of surrender,—
“Very well,” she said, “you shall have your one rose a day while you’re here. I reckon it won’t impoverish me, for no one never stays in Belle Harbour very long at a time—unless one lives here.”
He thought there was just a suggestion of interrogation in the remark.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” he replied. “I came down here for a fortnight, but I shan’t promise to go at the end of that period. You see, in New York I am not presented each day with a rose.”
“You must be very fortunate to be able to make your business affairs secondary to your whims,” she said a little unkindly.
“I am very fortunate,” he answered simply.