But Nicholas took me by the arm. I suspected that he did this in order to avoid my eyes. He wished, he said, to buy posies for us. He said to his wife: “You look like a flower yourself. Your cheeks are red. If you knew how much good it does me, to see you look so healthy.” She smiled at him, her eyes narrowed although not unkindly. “You should know that I can’t wear fresh flowers. They wither at once, if I wear them.” His own smile retained his ardent admiration of her. “But I must buy you something? This beautiful day--and you knocking a man’s eye out with your charms--I must buy you something. What shall it be? There’s a dog shop around on Park Avenue; and on my way up to meet you I noticed a good little pup in the window-cage. He took my fancy. Shan’t we go and buy him for you?” He was kindness itself in the way he held me grouped with them. He held me, and looked at her as if to say “We are your staunch supporters, your ardent admirers, Eva.” But I felt that in his determined insistence on her beauty of appearance he was over emphasizing; architecturally she was perfect, and he believed in decoration for its own sake, but he seemed to dwell on it because of some other side that he wished to slur over. “Don’t be so childish,” she said without rancour. She was a woman who followed one idea to its conclusion. I saw that she had something on her mind, and again I endeavoured to escape. But the traffic lights changed, and he rushed us across the street and in the direction of the window wherein pranced and yapped the good little pup. Late shoppers hurried in at doors, scuttling to attain the haven of the showrooms before closing time. Even now dusk was falling swiftly on the city. The shrill cries of newsboys knocked against the roar of the traffic, and from a phonograph shop we heard the sweeter shrillness of the “Peanut Vender.” “Goodbye,” I muttered; and dodged through the automobiles. Eva did not notice my departure; she built a protection around her thought, hedging it in safely from interruption. [Illustration] III We looked as if we were prepared to say that we were beaten by the city. But in fairness we could not altogether put it down to the city that it had been a trying day--as our mothers would have called it, although we would have used a stronger term. It was the end of the winter’s gaieties, and the beginning of the hot weather, and what we liked to call the humidity had begun to roll in from the ocean and fall upon us. The pigeons wheeled more languidly, the sparrows fought with less ferocity, and even the gulls following the rivers up from the sea might have had no real hope so half-heartedly did they dip, and recover themselves, and go on their pilgrimage.