Again Blanche dropped her eyes quickly; but her color never heightened, nor did the soft laces nestling over the graceful bust move at all quicker than the waltz might warrant. Van's face still bent over her with earnest expression, as she sipped the glass of punch he handed her; but neither spoke until they had crossed the corridor and passed another door into the conservatory. IV. The soft, warm air, heavy with the breath of the "Grand Duke" and of orange blossoms; the tremulous half-light from colored lamps hung amid the leaves; the dead stillness of the place, broken only by the plash of the fountain falling back into its moss-covered basin, all contrasted deliciously with the hot, dusty atmosphere and giddy buzzing under the flaring gas-jets left behind. They strolled slowly down the gravelled walk, between rows of huge tubs, moist and flower-laden with the products of almost every clime. Here gleamed the glossy leaves of the Southern _grandiflora_; the rare wax plant crept along the wall beyond, its pink, starry blooms gleaming delicately among the thick, artificial-seeming leaves; while, as though in honor of the happily-timed birthnight of the fair young mistress of all, a gorgeous century plant had opened its bud in a glory of form and color, magnificent as rare. "Blanche, do you remember how long I have known you?" Morris asked, suddenly breaking the silence. "Ever since you were like _this_; a close, callow bud, giving but vague promise of the glorious flowering of your womanhood! I watched the opening of every petal of your mind and tried to peer through them into the heart of the flower. But they sent you away; and now your return dazzles me with the brilliance and beauty of the full bloom. This was the past--_this_ is the present!" And reaching up, the man suddenly snapped off the glowing blossom from the cactus and held it before the girl, close to the pale camellia bud he had plucked before. She raised her beautiful face, crowned with its halo-like glory of hair, full to him; and the expression it took was graver and more womanly than before. But still no agitation reflected in the candid eyes that looked steadily into his, and the voice, more softly pitched, had no tremor in it, as she answered: "_Please_ think of me, then, as the child you used to know; never as the _debutante_ who must be fed, _a la_ Bouncey, on the sweets of sentiment." "Take sentiment--I mean the higher sentiment, that lifts us sometimes above our baser worldly nature--out of life, and it is not worth the living," Morris said earnestly. "That man could not understand it any more than he could understand you!" "Perhaps you are right," she answered, quietly. "_We_ are too old friends to talk society at each other; and you are _so_ different from him." Perhaps Morris was luckier for not replying. It may be that the Destiny, which, we are told, shapes our ends, did not leave his so rough-hewn as it might have.