But this morning the white paper before him remained far too white for his liking. The table at which he sat with a worried face was drawn across the bow of the wide windows; and through them the eyes were enticed by a long avenue of tall trees, which swept massively away from the gardens for many furlongs and was at last joined to the border of Carmion Wood; but, nearer, the eyes dropped from the windows to the upper garden, where--for the month was May--lay many beds of rare tulips, the whole drawn to an exquisite though, perhaps, intemperate design. Pink and purple, red and yellow, white and magenta, the carnival of gay tall tulips flamed in the sunlight and swayed to the lilt of the gentle wind, so that the young man’s brooding eyes likened them to glittering soldiers who every now and then stooped to the elegant distraction of a valse.... “So this is the way you work, Raymond Paris!” cried a soft, light voice behind him, and never was a young man with his way to make in the world more grateful for being disturbed. “I am in great trouble, Shelmerdene. For here have I been offered an untold sum for a short-story, and I have not the glimmer of an idea! The editor wrote to me saying that he wanted something not only witty but serious, something earnest as well as gay, and with a point. Now isn’t that an unfair thing to ask of a man?” And the young writer looked up at Shelmerdene with a self-pitying smile, while she stood beside him, playing thoughtfully with the catch of an ancient pink shagreen cigarette-case, which had once been vanity-box in chief to Queen Marie Antoinette, so they said. Now who shall describe Shelmerdene of the dark sleek hair, of the lips that smiled unaccountably, of the blue eyes that were gentle and witty and alight with understanding? She was lithe and dark-haired, and her face was white, and her eyes were as blue as night and as impersonal as the stars. She wore, this morning, a jumper of vermilion silk, and her skirt was thus and thus, and sweetly rakish on her head was a brown felt hat with a wide stiff brim, and on her feet were brown brogues of Russian leather, such as only men-servants can properly polish, women being what they are. Shelmerdene smiled down at Raymond Paris, the young writer who could not write a story.