Cowperwood, previously engrossed in financial speculations, was translated, as by the wave of a fairy wand, into another realm where birds and fledglings and grass and the light winds of heaven were more important than brick and stone and stocks and bonds. He got up and followed her flowing steps across the grass to where, near a clump of alder bushes, she had seen a mother sparrow enticing a fledgling to take wing. From her room upstairs, she had been watching this bit of outdoor sociology. It suddenly came to Cowperwood, with great force, how comparatively unimportant in the great drift of life were his own affairs when about him was operative all this splendid will to existence, as sensed by her. He saw her stretch out her hands downward, and run in an airy, graceful way, stooping here and there, while before her fluttered a baby sparrow, until suddenly she dived quickly and then, turning, her face agleam, cried: “See, I have him! He wants to fight, too! Oh, you little dear!” She was holding “him,” as she chose to characterize it, in the hollow of her hand, the head between her thumb and forefinger, with the forefinger of her free hand petting it the while she laughed and kissed it. It was not so much bird-love as the artistry of life and of herself that was moving her. Hearing the parent bird chirping distractedly from a nearby limb, she turned and called: “Don’t make such a row! I sha’n’t keep him long.” Cowperwood laughed—trig in the morning sun. “You can scarcely blame her,” he commented. “Oh, she knows well enough I wouldn’t hurt him,” Berenice replied, spiritedly, as though it were literally true. “Does she, indeed?” inquired Cowperwood. “Why do you say that?” “Because it’s true. Don’t you think they know when their children are really in danger?” “But why should they?” persisted Cowperwood, charmed and interested by the involute character of her logic. She was quite deceptive to him. He could not be sure what she thought. She merely fixed him a moment with her cool, slate-blue eyes. “Do you think the senses of the world are only five?” she asked, in the most charming and non-reproachful way. “Indeed, they know well enough. She knows.” She turned and waved a graceful hand in the direction of the tree, where peace now reigned. The chirping had ceased. “She knows I am not a cat.”