bouquet out to
her. "Every lady has her flower. These delicate orchids are for you."

But Beth ignored the offering. "You are still fond of flowers then?"
slipped from her.

"We do not leave a taste for flowers behind us with our toys," he
rejoined. "If we like flowers as children, we love them as men. The
taste develops like a talent when we cultivate it. To love flowers
with true appreciation of their affinities in regard to certain
persons, is an endowment, a grace of nature which bespeaks the most
absolute refinement of mind. And what would life be without refinement
of mind!"

Beth had walked on, and he was walking beside her.

"And how does the book progress?" he inquired.

"It is finished," she answered.

"What! already?" he exclaimed. "Why, it takes _me_ a week to write
five hundred words. But then, of course, my work is highly
concentrated. I have sent home for some of it to show you. You see I
am pertinacious. I said I would help you, and I will. I hope you will
live to be glad that we have met. But you must not write at such a
rate. You can only produce poor thin stuff in that way."

Beth shrugged her shoulders, and let him assume what he liked on the
subject.

They walked on a little way in silence, then he began again about the
flowers. "Flowers," he informed her, "were the great solace of my
boyhood--the sole solace, I may say, for I had no friends, no
companions, except a poor little chap, a cripple, on whom I took pity.
My people did not think me strong enough for a public school, so they
sent me to a private tutor, a man of excellent family, Rector of a
large seaside parish in the north. He only took me as a favour; he had
no other pupils. But it was very lonely in that great empty house. And
the seashore, although it filled my mind with poetry, was desolate,
desolate!"

Beth, as she listened to these meanderings of his fancy, and recalled
old Vicar Richardson and the house full of children, thought of Mr.
Pounce's remarks about feminine accuracy.

"But had you no girl-friend?" she asked.

"Only the lady of my dreams," he answered. "There was no _other_ lady
I should have looked at in the place. I was always refined. I met the
lady of my dreams eventually. It was among the mountains of the Tyrol.
Imagine a lordly castle, with drawbridge and moat, portcullis and
pleasaunce, and sauntering in the pleasaunce, among the flowers, a
lady--dressed in white----"

"Samite?" Beth ventured, contro