On her part, Imogene was very sober when she met Mrs. Bowen, though she had come in flushed and excited from the air and the morning's adventure. Mrs. Bowen was sitting by the fire, placidly reading; a vase of roses on the little table near her diffused the delicate odour of winter roses through the room; all seemed very still and dim, and of another time, somehow. Imogene kept away from the fire, sitting down, in the provisional fashion of women, with her things on; but she unbuttoned her pelisse and flung it open. Effie had gone to her room. "Did you have a pleasant drive?" asked Mrs. Bowen. "Very," said the girl. "Mr. Morton brought you these roses," continued Mrs. Bowen. "Oh," said Imogene, with a cold glance at them. "The Flemmings have asked us to a party Thursday. There is to be dancing." "The Flemmings?" "Yes." As if she now saw reason to do so, Mrs. Bowen laid the book face downward in her lap. She yawned a little, with her hand on her mouth. "Did you meet any one you knew?" "Yes; Mr. Colville." Mrs. Bowen cut her yawn in half. "We got out to walk in the Cascine, and we saw him coming in at the gate. He came up and asked if he might walk with us." "Did you have a pleasant walk?" asked Mrs. Bowen, a breath more chillily than she had asked if they had a pleasant drive. "Yes, pleasant enough. And then we came back and went down the river bank, and he skipped stones, and we took him to his hotel." "Was there anybody you knew in the Cascine?" "Oh no; the place was a howling wilderness. I never saw it so deserted," said the girl impatiently. "It was terribly hot walking. I thought I should burn up." Mrs. Bowen did not answer anything; she let the book lie in her lap. "What an odd person Mr. Colville is!" said Imogene, after a moment. "Don't you think he's very different from other gentlemen?" "Why?" "Oh, he has such a peculiar way of talking." "What peculiar way?" "Oh, I don't know. Plenty of the young men I see talk cynically, and I do sometimes myself--desperately, don't you know. But then I know very well we don't mean anything by it." "And do you think Mr. Colville does? Do you think he talks cynically?" Imogene leaned back in her chair and reflected. "No," she returned slowly, "I can't say that he does. But he talks lightly, with a kind of touch and go that makes you feel that he has exhausted all feeling. He doesn't parade it at all. But you hear between the words, don't you know, just as you read between the lines in some kinds of poetry. Of course it's everything in knowing what he's been through. He's perfectly unaffected; and don't you think he's good?" "Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Bowen. "In his way." "But he sees through you. Oh, quite! Nothing escapes him, and pretty soon he lets out that he has seen through you, and then you feel so _flat_! Oh, it's perfectly intoxicating to be with him. I would give the world to talk as he does." "What was your talk all about?"