"Very well, papa. But they're _mine_; surely I can do what I like with them?" she pouted. "Since they are, as you justly say, my dear, your own personal property, it seems to me only proper that you should write and acknowledge them, thanking the thoughtful sender in an appropriate note." "But, papa, the thoughtful sender is so _fearfully_ floral! I should have to spend nearly all my time writing appropriate notes." "I don't understand your tone, Sylvia. However, we may let that pass." He opened the newspaper with much rustling and crackling, and said, as if to end the discussion-- "If you receive another basket, or other offering of the same description, from our good friend Ridokanaki, you will write and thank him, will you not?" "I will not," she answered amiably, as if assenting. "You _will not_?" He peered at the modern daughter from behind the _Times_, and recognised in her grey eyes (with as much gratification as such meetings usually afford us) a lifelong friend. It was his own hereditary obstinacy. Sylvia went to the door, then turned round and said a shade apologetically-- "You see, darling, it seems such a wicked _waste_! Surely the money might be better spent! On--on the unemployed, or something. Why, the other day he sent a thing from Gerard's so enormous that it came quite alone in a van; and another came in a four-wheeler. And I wasn't rude, you know--I kept it." "I don't quite follow you, my dear. You kept what? The cab?" "No, the flowers. And I must say it is a pleasure to go and give one's orders now! The kitchen is like a fête at the Botanical Gardens." Sir James frowned absently, pretending to be suddenly absorbed in the paper until she had gone away, and shut the door. Then he put down the _Times_ carefully, and shook with laughter, comfortably to himself, as he only laughed when alone. His daughter's way of receiving homage was very much to his taste. * * * * * At the door of the little restaurant in King Street, waiting for him, Woodville found Ridokanaki. Slight and thin as he was, with his weary, drooping grey moustache, he looked always rather unusual and distinguished. He had black, wrinkled, heavy-lidded eyes, in which Sylvia had discovered a remarkable resemblance to the eyes of a parrot, though the fire in them was very far from being extinguished. He wore a gay light red carnation, but the flowerless Woodville looked far more festive. Woodville's enjoyment of nearly all experiences which were not absolutely depressing was greater than ever since his life of self-repression. To dine alone with the great Ridokanaki on the brink of some kind of sentimental crisis was to him a kind of intellectual, almost a literary joy, one which Sylvia could never either share or understand.