He noticed, too, that she received her homage with all the girlish dignity of an imperious young queen, a little too coldly and too haughtily, perhaps, and yet with a mild composure that was causing the honest-eyed Mrs. Spaulding to turn more than once in secret wonderment, and gaze at her admiringly. There was nothing in Cordelia's bearing to reveal any inner ruffling of a spirit tranquil and detached--nothing beyond the pale rose-like flush that had mounted to her softly undulating, almost gently hollowed cheeks, and the luminosity of her outwardly calm eyes. Cordelia did not see Hartley in the odorous, rustling stream that was slowly bearing him toward her until he was almost at her side. Then she paled a little, and let her eyes rest on him keenly, speaking smilingly, as she looked, to a florid woman confronting her. In a minute or two he himself was before her and had taken her hand. She had not expected him that afternoon. "It was so charming of you to come, Mr. Hartley," she murmured. It was the same phrase he had already heard her say at least half a dozen times over; the formality of her welcome chilled him. He had forgotten there were a dozen persons at his heels. "I _had_ to come!" he confessed. Something earnest in his tone frightened her. She showed him by her glance that there were others hemming them in. "Then you have read it?" she asked quickly, lowering her voice. "Yes; and I have so much, _so_ much to tell you about it. It is all wonderful, and all beautiful." She looked at him, startled. Her whole rapt face caught fire, and for a moment was suffused with a great light. Only in animals and wild things had he ever before seen that strange phosphorescence of the eyes. Then she looked into his face once more, and all the color went out of her own. She saw her mistake. "But which, _which_?" she cried in sudden anguish, under her breath. At first he did not understand. Then slowly he came to see just what she meant. "The Silver Poppy," he answered her, wondering. She put her four bent finger-tips up to her parted lips with a sudden odd little gesture, as though she was thrusting and holding back some involuntary small cry. It seemed a movement of both disappointment and despair. It was all over in a minute, and before Hartley could realize why it was done, or what it had meant, the same stream that had borne him in to her as relentlessly had carried him away. Ebbing into flushed but cooler diffuseness, it left him in another room, where he beheld rustling, laughing groups of women, and palms, and heard the sounds of muffled music and broken snatches of talk. He looked back toward Cordelia and tried to catch a glimpse of her, but a sea of plumed heads waved between them. "But life is only a vaudeville, with hunger and love for top-liners," he heard a gaunt tragedian disclaiming to a woman with penciled eyebrows and obviously rouged cheeks and lips.