Roxie often carried Allston’s thoughts back to those days by suggestions of one kind and another. And he never resented this. She never made him feel that he was recalling past events for the entertainment of an outsider. It was more as though she helped him live over again the pleasanter details. She accepted them as he had done at the time, simply and naïvely. “But I don’t know if it’s any stranger to find them in France than in my room every day,” he went on with a smile. “How do they get on my table?” “I put them there,” she answered directly. “Don’t you like them?” “Very much. It’s mighty kind of you, Roxie. About this time, three years back, there was a lady in France who used to do that for me.” She looked up quickly. “A girl?” she asked. “A lady--a very old lady.” “Oh.” “But the flowers were young. Flowers are always young, aren’t they?” “Until they die.” “Who knows? They may be young after that.” “Maybe,” she nodded seriously. “How old are you?” “Eighteen. How old are you?” “Twenty-four.” “Seems like you was younger.” “Is that very old, Roxie?” “No, sir, that ain’t very old,” she hastened to assure him, fearing she had offended. “No, sir, only seems like I’d be old when I was twenty-four.” “I doubt it--if you keep growing in the field. You’ll come up every spring.” “Seems sometimes like it was spring always.” “What?” he questioned. “That sounds as though you were in love.” Her cheeks flamed scarlet at that. He noticed it before she could turn. He studied her pretty back as she bent her head over her work and the curve of her neck where the soft hair grows. “Roxie,” he said without moving, in a lowered voice, “is love like that?” “I dunno,” she answered weakly. He scarcely heard her reply. His thoughts this time had gone back, not to France, but to a tiny sunlit cove on the mountain-side; to the impulsive clasp of a warm hand which had left him worried ever since. “It might be like that,” he said. “That’s what the poets are always singing, isn’t it?” “I dunno,” she repeated. He roused himself. “I don’t know either,” he said. “But perhaps some day we may find out--both of us. It sounds reasonable, anyhow.” He went out leaving Roxie alone with her burning thoughts while he reviewed his own.