"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the back fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my own cellar, I can't believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon with me.... Is it?" "It is ador--it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil of you to ask me!" "Then--will you?" almost timidly. "I will. I shall not pretend any more. I'd rather lunch with you than be President of this Republic." The butler pro tem. seated her. "You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And with the faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had his orders to lay two covers. Had he?" "From me?" he protested, reddening. "You don't suspect _me_, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Then glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of the lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are either dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?" "I think both are true," he said, laughing. And a little while later when he returned from the basement after admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber: "Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greeting his return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Such salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can't imagine.... I'm beginning to think you are rather wonderful." They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one another over the frosty rims--a long, curious glance from her; a straight gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long. Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung. She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride's roses from the centerpiece, and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh, young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals. "Sweet--how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident. They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses. "The strangest of all," she said, "is that it _seems_ all right--and--and we _know_ that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?" "Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you.... Shall I?" he asked evenly. She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate lips and chin. Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows. Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top--enough for them to see each other as in a dull afterglow.