"You--nomadic? How?"

"Mother travels unceasingly from place to place, person to person, thing
to thing. I travel unceasingly from motive to motive, mind to mind; my
native air is also desert air--hence the sterility of my work."

Flora rose, but her eyebrows descended.

"Your work," she said, "is not sterile."

"That, my dear," said Felix, "is prejudice." And perceiving that she
was going to kiss him, he waited without annoyance. For a woman of
forty-two, with two children and three books of poems--and not knowing
which had taken least out of her--with hazel-gray eyes, wavy eyebrows
darker than they should have been, a glint of red in her hair; wavy
figure and lips; quaint, half-humorous indolence, quaint, half-humorous
warmth--was she not as satisfactory a woman as a man could possibly have
married!

"I have got to go down and see Tod," he said. "I like that wife of his;
but she has no sense of humor. How much better principles are in theory
than in practice!"

Flora repeated softly, as if to herself:

"I'm glad I have none." She was at the window leaning out, and Felix
took his place beside her. The air was full of scent from wet leaves,
alive with the song of birds thanking the sky. Suddenly he felt her arm
round his ribs; either it or they--which, he could not at the moment