"You needn't look at me so reproachfully, Marie-Louise. It isn't my fault."
"It is your fault," Marie-Louise accused her, "for being like a flame. Father says that people hold out their hands to you as they do to a fire."
"And what," Anne demanded, "has all this to do with Geoffrey Fox?"
"You know," Marie-Louise told her bluntly, "he loves you and looks up to you—and I—sit at his feet."
There was something of tenseness in the small face framed by the red hair. Anne touched Marie-Louise's cheek with a tender finger. "Dear heart," she said, "he is just a man."
For a moment the child stood very still, then she said, "Is he? Or is he a god, like my Pan in the garden?"
Later she decided that Geoffrey should come in May. "When there are roses. And I'll have some people out."
It was in May that Rose Acres justified its name. The marble Pan piping on his reeds faced a garden abloom with beauty. At the right, a grass walk led down to a sunken fountain approached by wide stone steps.
It was on these steps that Marie-Louise sat one morning, weaving a garland.