She smiled at him with half-closed eyes and the conviction that, with Pleydon, she could easily be different. He leaned forward and his voice startled her with the impression that he had read her mind: “If you could care for any one a lifetime would be short to get you. Look, you have never been out of my thoughts--or within my reach. It seems a myth that I kissed you; impossible ... Linda.” “But you did,” she told him, gaining happiness from the mere assurance. They were alone in the drawing-room, and he rose, sweeping her up into his arms. Yet the expected joy evaded her desire and the sudden determination to lose utterly her reserve. It was evident that he as well was conscious of this, for he released her and stood frowning, his protruding lower lip uglier than ever. “A lifetime would be nothing,” he said again; “or it might be everything wasted. Which are you--all soul and spirit, or none?” “I don't know,” she replied, in her bitter disappointment, her heart pinched by the sharpest pain she remembered. There was the stir of skirts at the door; Linda turned with a sense of relief to Amelia Lowrie. However, dinner progressed very well indeed. “Then your aunt,” Elouise said to Pleydon, “was Carrie Dodge. I recall her perfectly.” That established, the Lowrie women talked with a gracious freedom, exploring the furthermost infiltrations of blood and marriages. Linda was again serene. She watched Pleydon with an extraordinary formless conviction--each of them was a part of the other's life; while in some way marriage and love were now hopelessly confused. It was beyond effort or planning. That was all she could grasp, but she was contented. Sometimes when he talked he made the familiar descriptive gesture with his hand, as if he were shaping the form of his speech: a sculptor's gesture, Linda realized. Later they wandered into the garden, a dark enclosure with the long ivy-covered façade of the house broken by the lighted spaces of windows. Beyond the fence at regular intervals an electric car passed with an increasing and diminishing clangor. The white petals of the magnolia-tree had fallen and been wheeled away; the blossoms of the rhododendron were dead on their stems. It was, Linda felt, a very old garden that had known many momentary emotions and lives. Dodge Pleydon, standing before her, put his hands on her shoulders. “Would I have any success?” he asked. “Do you think you'd care for me?” She smiled confidently up at his intent face. “Oh, yes.” Yet she hoped that he would not kiss her--just then. The delicacy of her longing and need were far removed from material expressions. This, of course, meant marriage; but marriage was money, comfort, the cold thing her mother had impressed on her. Love, her love, was a mistake here. But in a little it would all come straight and she would understand. She no longer had confidence in her mother's wisdom.