"Yes," she answered. "I congratulate myself upon that. Upon the whole I do not know any one who is more fortunate than I am. No other life would suit me half so well as the one I lead. I am fond of gayety, and change, and freedom, and I have all three. Richard is amiable, the children are like him, and there is nothing to interfere with my having my own way, and amusing myself as I please. I should be thoroughly unhappy if I could not have my own way; to have it invariably is one of my laudable ambitions, and as I always get it you see I have reason for being charmed with my lot." "You are very fortunate," he said. "I am more than fortunate," she answered. Then she broke into a little laugh. "It is rather odd," she said, "that just before you came in I was lying thinking of the time you were in Washington before, and there came back to me something I said to you the night you gave me the heliotrope." "Was it," said Tredennis, "what you said to me about being happy?" "What!" she said. "You remember it? I scarcely thought that you would remember it." "Yes," said Tredennis, "I remember it." "I could not bear the thought of not being happy," she went on. "It had never occurred to me that such a thing was a possibility until you said something which suggested it to me. I recollect how it startled me. It was such a new idea." She stopped and lay for a moment silent. "And this morning?" suggested Tredennis. "This morning," she answered, rather slowly, though smiling as she spoke, "this morning, as I said, I decided that I had been very fortunate." "Then," he said, "you _have_ been happy." "If I had not been," she answered, "it would have been very curious. I have never been interfered with in the least." "That is happiness, indeed," said Tredennis. Just now he was reflecting upon the fact that all their conversations took the same turn and ended in the same way. It mattered little how they began; in all cases she showed the same aptitude for making her subject an entirely inconsequent source of amusement. Experience was teaching him that he need expect nothing else. And, even as he was thinking this, he heard her laugh faintly again. "Shall I tell you what I see in your face," she said,--"what I see oftener than anything else?" "I should be glad to know," he replied. "I see that you are thinking that I am very much changed, and that it is not for the better." He paused a moment before he answered her, and when he did so he spoke with his eyes fixed on the floor, and slowly: "You are not the Bertha I used to know," he said. "But that I should have allowed myself to expect it shows simply that I am a dull, unprogressive fellow."