es of the
field, though they never appeared in as many graceful arrays as she.

'Yes, mine, thank you,' she said, and composedly dropped it into its
place in the most orderly of useless conglomerations of silken pockets
and puzzling pigeon holes. He watched her fingers, and then looked back
at her.

'Lois--such an odd name for you--such a quaint, staid Puritan name.'

'And I am neither quaint nor staid nor Puritan. Thank you. Yes, my
mother must have had recollections of her New England home strong on her
when she gave it me, down on the Louisiana shores. It always sounded
even to me a little strange and frigid among such half-tropical
surroundings.'

As she spoke a sudden pang of utter weariness and longing seized him. A
rush of the boyish malady of homesickness, concentrated from all the
dreary months of his long absence, and none the less poignant because it
was involuntary. The wide, cool, shadowy halls of his mother's house,
always aglow with blossoms and haunted with their odors, all the
superficial lotus-charm of Southern life--and he had lived it
superficially enough to catch all its poetry rose before him. It caught
away his breath and choked sudden tears into his eyes. Came and went
like a flash--for before she had done speaking a sudden new bond of
sympathy put away the _stranger_ forevermore, and he was no longer
alone.

'Then you are Southern born too,' he said, with a quick step forward,
and involuntarily outstretched hand. Hers dropped into it.

'Yes, I am hardly acclimated yet. I shiver under these pale Northern
skies from August till June. O my Louisiana, you never made 'life a
burden' with such dark, chill days, and sobbing, cruel winds!' She
turned to the windows. A sudden uncontrollable quaver of impatience and
longing ran through her speech and hurried the words with unusual
vehemence.

'I thought you must have liked the day, since you robed yourself in its
haze and mist.' He laid his hand lightly on her gray drapery with
reverent touch.

'And _I_ thought my carnations would redeem that. Since they
didn't--'and she tossed the whole bright, spicy handful on the table.

In a vase on the mantle, gray, passionate, odorous blooms were massed
loosely about a cluster of fragile, intense day lilies, and a dash of
purple and crimson trailed with the fuchsias over its edge, and gleamed
up from the white marble ledge. He went to the vase, shook out the
fuchsias, and laid the residue in her lap.