Mrs. Todd was not at home; perhaps, if she had been. . . . But instead of the big, motherly old figure, beaming at them from the toll-house door, a slatternly maid-servant said her mistress was out. "We ain't doin' much cream now," she said, wrapping her arms in her apron and shivering; "it's too cold. I ain't got anything but vanilla." "We'll have vanilla, then," Blair said, in his rather courtly way, and the girl, opening the door of the "_saloon_," scurried off. "By Jove!" said Blair, "I believe these are the identical blue paper roses--look at them!" She sat down wearily. "I believe they are," she said, and began to pull off her gloves. Outside in the tollhouse garden the frosted stems of last summer's flowers stood upright in the snow. She remembered that Mrs. Todd's geraniums had been glowing in the window that winter day when David had shouted his triumphant news. Probably they were dead now. Everything else was dead. "Still the tissue-paper star on the ceiling!" Blair cried, gaily, "yes, everything is just the same!" And indeed, when the maid, glancing with admiring eyes at the handsome gentleman and the cross-looking lady, put down on the semi-translucent marble top of the table two tall glasses of ice-cream, each capped with its dull and dented spoon, the past was completely reproduced. As the frowsy little waitress left them, they looked at the pallid, milky stuff, and then at each other, and their individual preoccupations thinned for a moment. Blair laughed; Elizabeth smiled faintly: "You don't expect me to eat it, I hope?" "I won't make you eat it. Let's talk." But Elizabeth took up her gloves. "I must go, Blair." He pushed the tumblers aside and leaned toward her; one hand gripped the edge of the table until the knuckles were white: the other was clenched on his knee. "Elizabeth," he said, in a low voice, "have you forgiven me?" "Forgiven you? What for?" she said absently; then remembered and looked at him indifferently. "Oh, I suppose so. I had forgotten." "I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't loved you. You know that." She was silent. "Do you hate me for loving you?" On Elizabeth's cheeks the smudge of crimson began to flame into scarlet. "I don't hate you. I think you were a fool to love me. I think anybody is a fool to love anybody." In a flash Blair understood. _She had quarrelled with David!_ It seemed as if all the blood in his body surged into his throat; he felt as if he were suffocating; but he spoke quietly. "Don't say I was a fool; say I am a fool, if you want to. Because I love you still. I love you now. I shall never stop loving you." Elizabeth glanced at him with a sort of impersonal interest. So _that_ was the way a man might love? "Well, I am sorry for you, Blair. I'm sorry, because it hurts to love people who don't love you. At least, I should think it did. I don't love anybody, so I don't know much about it." "You have broken with David," he said slowly.