denly, as you least expect it, her hand gives a swoop down
on her friend's spread-out cards, she moves one of them quickly, with a
'There!' or else an inarticulate little murmur of triumph over his
heedlessness, and then transfers her gaze back to you again, with an
innocent candor which seems to say that it has never been abstracted. I
don't know anything pleasanter than conversation under such
circumstances."

Margaret laughed. "Come, Garda, let us go and have a nearer look." For
Lucian had placed himself at some distance from the tomb; he was giving
a view of it at the end of a forest vista.

But Garda did not care for a nearer look. She had seen the old tomb many
times.

"Let us make a wreath for it, then, while Mr. Spenser is sketching. So
that it can feel that for once--"

"It's too old to feel," said Garda.

Margaret gathered a quantity of a glossy-leaved vine which was growing
over some bushes near. "I shall make a wreath, even if you don't," she
said. And she sat down and began her task.

"I think this will do," said Lucian, after another ten minutes,
surveying his work. "I can finish it up at home."

Margaret threw down her vines, and began to help him collect his
scattered possessions.

"Don't go yet; it's so lovely here," said Garda. "Make a second sketch
for me."

"I will copy you one from this," he answered.

"No, I want one made especially for me, even if it's only a beginning;
and I want it made here."

"But we really ought to be going back, Garda," said Margaret.

"I _never_ want to go back," Garda declared. She laughed as she said it.
But she looked at Lucian with the same serene content; it was very
infectious, he sank down on his camp-stool, and began again.

Margaret stood a moment as if uncertain. Then she sat down beside Garda,
and went on with her wreath.

"How perfectly still it is here!" said Lucian. "Florida's a very still
land, there are no hot sounds any more than cold ones; what's your idea
of the hottest sound you know, Mrs. Harold?"

Margaret considered. "The sound--coming in through your closed green
blinds on a warm summer afternoon when you want to sleep--of a
stone-mason chipping away on a large block of stone somewhere, out in
the hot sun."

"Good! Do you know the peculiar odor made by summer rain on those same
green blinds you speak of? Dusty ones?"

"They needn't be dusty. Yes, I know it well."

"I'm afraid you're an observer; I hope you don't turn the talen