He put into her hands the loose bunch of syringa and rose plucked for her in the Purdies' garden, laid his hat and gloves on the parapet; then, with an eye for the better bank, walked to the end of the bridge. She watched him descending the steep bank and issuing into the broad shallow basin of the stream's way. The sun was still high enough to fill the hollows with warm light and mellow the doubles of trees and grass in the stream. In this landscape of green and pale gold he looked black and tall and angular. The wind blew longish locks of hair across his forehead, and she had a moment's pleased and timorous reflection that he looked like Satan coming into the Garden. He advanced from tussock to tussock. He came to the brink of the marsh. The lilies wavered what seemed but a hand's-breadth from him. But he stooped, he reached--Oh, could anything so foolish happen as that he could not get them! Or, more foolish still, plunge in to the knees! He straightened from his fruitless effort, drew back, but before she could think what he was about he had leaned forward again, flashed out his cane, and with three quick, cutting slashes the lilies were mown. It was deftly, delicately, astonishingly done, but it gave her a singular shock, as if she had seen a hawk strike its prey. He drew them cleverly toward him in the crook of his cane, took them up daintily in his fingers, and returned to her across the shallow valley. She waited him with mixed emotions. [Illustration: HE TOOK THE LILIES UP DAINTILY, AND RETURNED TO HER.] "Oh, how could you!" she murmured, as he put them into her hand. He looked at her in amused astonishment. "Why, aren't they right?" They were as clean clipped off and as perfect as if the daintiest hand had plucked them. "Oh, yes," she admitted, "they're lovely, but I don't like the way you got them." "I took the means I had," he objected. "I don't think I like it." His whole face was sparkling with interest and amusement. "Is that so? Why not?" "You're too--too"--she cast about for the word--"too terribly resourceful!" "I see," he said. If she had feared he would laugh, it showed how little she had gauged the limits of his laughter. He only looked at her rather more intently than he had before. "But, my good child, resourcefulness is a very natural instinct. I am afraid you read more into it than is there. You wanted the flowers, I had a stick, and in my youth I was taught to strike clean and straight. I am really a very simple fellow." Looking him in the eyes, which were of a clear, candid gray, she was ready to believe it. It seemed as if he had let her look for a moment through his manner, his ironies, his armor of indifference, to the frank foundations of his nature. "But, you see, the trouble is you don't in the least look it," she argued.