He drove home with the ladies, and Mrs. Bowen made him stay to tea. As if she felt that he needed to be consoled for the failure of his Carnival, she was especially indulgent with him. She played to him on the piano some of the songs that were in fashion when they were in Florence together before. Imogene had never heard them; she had heard her mother speak of them. One or two of them were negro songs, such as very pretty young ladies used to sing without harm to themselves or offence to others; but Imogene decided that they were rather rowdy. "Dear me, Mrs. Bowen! Did _you_ sing such songs? You wouldn't let Effie!" "No, I wouldn't let Effie. The times are changed. I wouldn't let Effie go to the theatre alone with a young gentleman." "The times are changed for the worse," Colville began. "What harm ever came to a young man from a young lady's going alone to the theatre with him?" He stayed till the candles were brought in, and then went away only because, as he said, they had not asked him to stay to dinner. He came nearly every day, upon one pretext or another, and he met them oftener than that at the teas and on the days of other ladies in Florence; for he was finding the busy idleness of the life very pleasant, and he went everywhere. He formed the habit of carrying flowers to the Palazzo Pinti, excusing himself on the ground that they were so cheap and so abundant as to be impersonal. He brought violets to Effie and roses to Imogene; to Mrs. Bowen he always brought a bunch of the huge purple anemones which grow so abundantly all winter long about Florence. "I wonder why _purple_ anemones?" he asked her one day in presenting them to her. "Oh, it is quite time I should be wearing purple," she said gently. "Ah, Mrs. Bowen!" he reproached her. "Why do I bring purple violets to Miss Effie?" "You must ask Effie!" said Mrs. Bowen, with a laugh. After that he stayed away forty-eight hours, and then appeared with a bunch of the red anemones, as large as tulips, which light up the meadow grass when it begins to stir from its torpor in the spring. "They grew on purpose to set me right with you," he said, "and I saw them when I was in the country."