"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.
"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do you?'
"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'
"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them bloom. No?'
"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both laughed.
"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We want what the whole world can give.'
"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.
"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.
"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in this life: that's you and I. The world has got to teach us a number of things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old world.'
"He leaned toward her and, elbow on his knee, he set looking at her. But she was looking a little by him, into the green of the room, and I guess past that, into the green of all outdoors. I got up and slipped out, without their noticing me, and I went through the house with one fact bulging out of the air and occupying my brain. And it was that sitting there beside him, with him owning her future like he owned his own, Robin's world was as different from Alex's as the world is from the Proudfits' conservatory.