ation, the same
composed and rich indifference. "These gardens are so beautiful."

Such was her first remark, chosen with some purpose, I knew quite
well; and I observed that I hoped I was not too late for their full
perfection, if too late to visit them in her company.

She turned her head slightly toward Charley. "We have been enjoying them
so much."

It was of absorbing interest to feel simultaneously in these brief
speeches he vouchsafed--speeches consummate in their inexpressive
flatness--the intentional coldness and the latent heat of the creature.
Since Natchez and Mobile (or whichever of them it had been that had
witnessed her beginnings) she had encountered many men and women, those
who could be of use to her and those who could not; and in dealing
with them she had tempered and chiselled her insolence to a perfect
instrument, to strike or to shield. And of her greatest gift, also,
she was entirely aware--how could she help being, with her evident
experience? She knew that round her whole form swam a delicious,
invisible sphere, a distillation that her veriest self sent forth, as
gardenias do their perfume, moving where she moved and staying where she
stayed, and compared with which wine was a feeble vapor for a man to get
drunk on.

"Flowers are always so delightful."

That was her third speech, pronounced just like the others, in a low,
clear voice--simplicity arrived at by much well-practiced complexity.
And she still looked at Charley.

Charley now responded in his little banker accent. "It is a magnificent
collection." This he said looking at me, and moving a highly polished
finger-nail along a very slender mustache.

The eyes of Hortense now for a moment glanced at the mixed company of
boat-passengers, who were beginning to be led off in pilgrim groups by
the appointed guides.

"We were warned it would be too crowded," she remarked.

Charley was looking at her foot. I can't say whether or not the two
light taps that the foot now gave upon the floor of the landing brought
out for me a certain impatience which I might otherwise have missed
in those last words of hers. From Charley it brought out, I feel quite
sure, the speech which (in some form) she had been expecting from him as
her confederate in this unwelcome and inopportune interview with me,
and which his less highly schooled perceptions had not suggested to him
until prompted by her.

"I should have been very glad to include you in our