she said.

'These are plucked to be sent to a friend; otherwise I'm reluctant to
take the life of flowers for a whim. Wild flowers, I mean. I am not
sentimental about garden flowers: they are cultivated for decoration,
grown for clipping.'

'I suppose they don't carry the same signification,' said Dacier, in the
tone of a pupil to such themes.

'They carry no feeling,' said she. 'And that is my excuse for plucking
these, where they seem to spring like our town-dream of happiness. I
believe they are sensible of it too; but these must do service to my
invalid friend, who cannot travel. Are you ever as much interested in
the woes of great ladies as of country damsels? I am not--not unless
they have natural distinction. You have met Lady Dunstane?'

The question sounded artless. Dacier answered that he thought he
had seen her somewhere once, and Diana shut her lips on a rising
under-smile.

'She is the coeur d'or of our time; the one soul I would sacrifice these
flowers to.'

'A bit of a blue-stocking, I think I have heard said.'

'She might have been admitted to the Hotel Rambouillet, without being
anything of a Precieuse. She is the woman of the largest heart now
beating.'

'Mr. Redworth talked of her.'

'As she deserved, I am sure.'

'Very warmly.'

'He would!'

'He told me you were the Damon and Pythias of women.'

'Her one fault is an extreme humility that makes her always play second
to me; and as I am apt to gabble, I take the lead; and I am froth in
comparison. I can reverence my superiors even when tried by intimacy
with them. She is the next heavenly thing to heaven that I know. Court
her, if ever you come across her. Or have you a man's horror of women
with brains?'

'Am I expressing it?' said he.

'Do not breathe London or Paris here on me.' She fanned the crocuses
under her chin. 'The early morning always has this--I wish I had a
word!--touch... whisper... gleam... beat of wings--I envy poets now more
than ever!--of Eden, I was going to say. Prose can paint evening and
moonlight, but poets are needed to sing the dawn. That is because prose
is equal to melancholy stuff. Gladness requires the finer language.
Otherwise we have it coarse--anything but a reproduction. You
politicians despise the little distinctions "twixt tweedledum and
tweedledee," I fancy.'

Of the poetic sort, Dacier's uncle certainly did. For himself he
confessed to not having thought much on them.

'But how divine is u