"Thank God," he said, smiling.
"I want you to like me, always," she said. "Will you?"
"I promise," he replied so blithely that for a moment his light irony deceived her. Then something in his eyes left her silent, concerned, unresponsive—only her heart seemed to repeat persistently in childish reiteration, the endless question, Why? Why? Why? And she heard it but found no answer where love was not, and had never been.
"I—am sorry," she said in a low voice. "I—I try to understand you—but I don't seem to.... I am so very sorry that you—care for me."
He took her gloved hand, and she let him.
"I guess I'm nothing but a harlequin after all," he said, "and they're legitimate objects for pity. Good-bye, Mrs. Leeds. You've been very patient and sweet with a blithering lunatic.... I've committed only another harlequinade of a brand-new sort. But the fall from that balcony would have been less destructive."
She looked at him out of her gray eyes.
"One thing," she said, with a tremulous smile, "you may be certain that I am not going to forget you very easily."
"Another thing," he said, "I shall never forget you as long as I live; and—you have my violets, I see. Are they to follow the gardenia?"
"Only when their time comes," she said, trying to laugh.