"By the way," he says, suddenly and mischievously ("by the way" being a byword of the captain under discussion), "it strikes me as rather droll that such a charming flirtation should have sprung up between you and Captain Frank Fontenay--the man who tried to help kill me, and the little fairy who helped cure me." "Ah, yes, now I think of it," with an infinitesimal shudder, "he _was_ Senator Winans' second in that affair. Well," saucily this, "you could not have been _seconded_ by a finer gentleman." He rises and saunters over to her side, out of reach of Mrs. Conway's ears, who is near the window (exactly what Lulu wishes him to do). Long ago he has read, like an open page, the pure, adoring heart of this girl--no vanity in him, for it is so palpable to all; to a certain degree he loves her, admires her fresh, young beauty, her sunny ways; means certainly some day to make her his wife; and something under her surface gayety now that reveals a wistful, unsatisfied yearning touches him to greater tenderness than he has ever felt for her before. As he bends to speak she turns her head, with a deepening flush; the movement wafts to him the subtle fragrance of a white rose worn in her brown hair, and the words she longs to hear die unspoken on his lips. What is there in the fragrance of a flower that can pierce one deeper than a sword-thrust with the sweet-bitterness of memory? What kinship does it bear to the roses that blossomed in other days, in other hands that we have loved? Who can tell? Impatiently he disengages it from its becoming brown setting and tosses it far from him. "Never wear white roses where I am, Lulu; I cannot bear their perfume--it absolutely sickens me. I like you best in scarlet. It suits your piquant beauty best." "Did _she_ wear white roses?" she queries, with inexpressible bitterness, and reaching conclusions with a woman's quick wit. "_She_ wore white roses--yes," he answers, slowly, as if impelled by some power stronger than his own volition; "and, Lulu, she sat one evening with her lap full of white roses, and her hands glanced among them as white as they--you have heard the whole story before--and the only really cowardly act of my life, the only dastardly speech of my life, was made then--oh, Heaven! I shall never forget the eyes she lifted to my face; white roses always stir me with remorse--always breathe the funereal air of dead hopes." "It is a sin to love her so--now," she whispered, under her breath. "I know, I know; but cannot you understand, Lu, that this is remorse that has built its habitation over the grave of love? Another love is rising in my heart above the wreck of my earlier one, but my regret for what _I_ caused her to suffer then--for what I have unwittingly caused her to bear since--is, and must ever be, unceasing." "You need not grieve so deeply," she urges, trying to comfort him. "She found consolation--she has 'learned to love another.'"