she
stamped a violent foot]--if you feel it your duty to return them, why
not return them to the florist or the sender? Marked though my
attentions may have been, does that justify you in assuming that I am,
so to speak, the only floral prospect in the park? There's the Dominie,
for instance. He's notoriously your admirer, and I've seen him at
Eberling's quite lately." (Mendacious young scoundrel!)

For the moment she was beguiled by the plausibility of his manner.

"How should he know that pink roses are my favorites?" she said
uncertainly.

"How should _I_, for that matter?" he retorted at once. "Though any
idiot could see at a glance that you're at least half sister to the
whole rose tribe."

"Now you're beginning again," she complained. "You see, it's impossible
to treat you as an ordinary acquaintance."

"But what do you think of me as a painter-man?" inquired the bewildering
youth.

Preparatory to entering the house she had taken off her gloves, and now
one pinky-brown hand rested on the door lintel below him. "The question
is," said she, "wasn't it really you that sent the roses, and don't you
realize that you mustn't?"

"The question is," he repeated, "whether, being denied the ordinary
avenues of approach to a shrine, one is justified in jumping the fence
with one's votive offerings. Now I hold--"

Her left hand, shifting a little, flashed a gleam of gold into his eager
eyes, striking him into silence. When he spoke again, all the vividness
was gone from his voice. "I beg your pardon," he said. "Yes; I sent the
roses. You shan't be troubled again in that way--or any other way. Do
you mind if I finish this job?"

Victory for the defense! Yet the rosebud face of Anne Leffingwell
expressed concern and doubt rather than gratification. There is such a
thing as triumph being too complete.

"I think you're doing it very nicely," was the demure reply.

Notwithstanding this encomium, the workman knocked off early to sit on
my bench and indulge in the expression of certain undeniable but vague
truisms, such as that while there is life there is hope, and it isn't
necessary to display a marriage license in order to purchase a plain
gold band. But his usual buoyant optimism was lacking; he spoke like one
who strives to convince himself. Later on the lady in the case paused to
offer to me some contumelious if impersonal reflections upon love at
first sight, which she stigmatized as a superstition unworthy of t