“Miss Taylor told me you were coming, and my unfailing instinct told me that, being a lady, you would have forgotten to have all the arrangements necessary for your comfort made before your arrival. Now you shall see whether I have forgotten how to do marketing. There is the twopenny cottage, there is the superior souchong, and there is the oleomargarine--the very best. And that is for you.” He gave her a little box, which she opened and found to contain ferns and gardenias. She sat down and handled them lovingly, with the simple pleasure of a child, and, when she looked up, she found Aubrey raking out the coals of the extinct fire with a poker. “Never mind; leave it alone. It is out; and, if I ring and make the girl light it again, she will only fill the room with smoke. I am not very cold.” Indeed for the moment she had forgotten that she was cold; but she shivered now and then. “But I am. Now you shall see what it is to have a universal genius about you. In ten minutes my art will produce from this gloomy heap of cinders----” “A cloud of thick black smoke which will suffocate us both. Don’t be silly, Aubrey; do leave it alone!” said Annie, petulantly, condescending to struggle for the poker. But he would not let it go; so she resigned herself to watching while he broke up the little fragile box which had held the flowers, took the paper off his other parcels, and set to work earnestly to make a fire. “You will look just like a sweep when you have finished,” said Annie, with resignation. “A little soap and water will remove all traces of the deed.” “Oh, of course, if you like to play at maid-of-all-work!” said she, contemptuously. Her spirits were rising again to the level of the old days when she and he were on tour with the Comedy Company. He rose superior to her scorn, for, after a little trouble and one or two more gusts of smoke, the fire began to burn up brightly. “Now ring for a kettle, and let us make tea ourselves,” said he. She rang, the tea-things were brought up, and in a few minutes Annie, refreshed and comforted, was listening to his account of his movements since they last met. “I have created two characters, invented a new soup, written a book, cut it up myself in two papers, discovered my ideal woman two or three times, had two bad colds and one attack of neuralgia, lost fifteen pounds at cards, and narrowly escaped being married.” “To one of the ideals?” “Of course not. One never marries one’s ideal. No; this was to be the loveliest of her sex. Happily a man turned up at the last moment who had a prior claim to her hand, and I was saved.” “Happy woman!” “I see you don’t look at the case from my point of view, Miss Langton.” “No; I take up the cause of my sex against you.” “That is unkind. She treated me very cruelly, I assure you.” “For which and for your consequent deliverance from the trammels of constancy you are very grateful.”