For Cornelia all life and light centred upon the little painted table at which she sat with Mr. Bromley. The world to her was like a shadowy room at sunset, when through a window a last shaft from the rosy sun illumines one spot alone, making it glorious, and all else dim and formless. Mr. Bromley and she sat together in this golden glow, an aura that shimmered out to nothing all round about them, so that there was no definite background; and for anything more than two or three feet away she was astigmatic. Elation sweet as music possessed her. She was not only lunching at a restaurant with a Distinguished Man, quite as if she were a prima donna in Paris, but that Distinguished Man was Mr. Bromley—Mr. Bromley himself, pale with studious wisdom, yet manly, and incomparably more exciting than the symbol of him drawn with five lines and a dot upon her mountain. She had sometimes trembled when she looked at that emaciated symbol: What wonder could there be that she became a little too elegant, that her laughter rang a little too loudly, or that she showed herself disdainful of lowly presences in a dim background, now, when she sat facing her Ideal made actual in all his beauty? Beauty it was, in good faith, to Cornelia, and, so far as she was concerned, Praxiteles, experimenting to improve Mr. Bromley, could only have marred him. There was gray in his hair, but it was not emphasized, since he was an ashen blond; and for Cornelia—unaware of his actual years and content to remain so—he had no age, he had only perfection. So beautiful he was in the rosy light with which she encircled him. “Aren’t you going to eat your waffles, now you’ve got ’em?” he asked, a little querulously. “Waffles?” she said, as if she knew of none and the word were strange to her. “Waffles?” “Aren’t you going to eat them? I supposed that was why you came here.” She looked down at her plate, appeared surprised to find it occupied, and uttered a courtesy laughter with such grace it seemed almost that she sang the diatonic scale. This effect was so pronounced, indeed, that several people at other tables turned—again—to look at her, and Mr. Bromley reddened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You mean these waffles. Yes, indeed!” And here she repeated her too musical laughter, accompanying it with several excited gestures of amazement as she exclaimed, “_Imagine_ my not noticing them when they’re absolutely my favourite food! Absolutely they are, my dear man, I do assure you!” Then, having touched a waffle with her fork, she set the fork down, placed her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands and gazed upon her companion lustrously. “Mr. Bromley,” she said, “how did your father and mother happen to choose ‘Gregory’ for your first name? Were you named for somebody else, or did they just have kind of an inspiration to call you Gregory.” “I was named for an uncle,” he replied briefly. “How beautiful!” she murmured. “What?”