for I have
lost that as well as youth. I am an old man: I have no to-morrows. Carry
your orange-blossoms away, Mary: their perfume is too strong for me."

I had listened dreamily, without taking much meaning from their words.
My mother went on into the next conservatory and picked roses and
camellias, and Mr. Floyd watched her, shivered, and, passing his arm
within mine, walked back into the first greenhouse, among the bristling
cactuses and broad, silky-leaved bananas.

"As soon as you are free from college, Floyd," said he, "you and I will
go to Europe; that is, if I am alive. The doctors say travel is good for
me--occupation without fever, interest without personal emotion. Yes, a
year from July we will set out, and if Helen can go with us, she and
your mother shall be our companions."

"And how about your position at Washington?"

"After the fourth of March I shall never hold office again. I suppose
that is what is killing me: I have worked too hard and abused my
strength a little."

I looked into his face. I was almost as tall as he now, and Mr. Floyd
had always been a head above other men. I put my hand on his shoulder
and looked steadily into his face.

"I wish you would tell me, sir," said I, "what you mean when you say
these things. Are you really ill? Your allusions to your state of health
are so painful to me, and to my mother too."

"Oh," he returned kindly, "your mother knows all about it." He mused a
little, then cheered up, laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. "If I
were a man in decent health," he affirmed with an air of jollity, "I
should be your father-in-law. No, that is not it: I should be your
stepfather. Thank your stars that I have the modesty not to believe
myself irresistible under present circumstances."

"But why not?" said I, quite in earnest. "If you are less strong than
formerly, all the more need of your having a wife. I should suppose."

"As to my need, that is nothing, nothing. But think: if she cared for me
I should be preparing tortures for her. She would feel nothing but
dread. I may die at any time, Floyd, if I am shocked or startled.
Raptures would not do for me, either: I should be afraid to kiss my
wife, lest my heart should increase its beating by a throb a minute. No:
I shall marry no one now: I have put by the hope, as an old man puts by
all the dreams of his prime."

"It might all have come to pass," I exclaimed bitterly, "had it not been
for me."

"Oh, my boy