pleasure that somehow seemed vulgar and forbidden to see him eat
so vastly, with such obvious delight. As he made his jest about
her entry into the working classes--she who suggested a queen
bee, to employ the labors of a whole army of willing toilers,
while she herself toiled not--he was tilted back at his ease,
smoking a cigarette and watching the sunbeams sparkle in the waves
of her black hair like jewels showered there. "You're surely quite
well again," he went on, the trend of his thought so hidden that
he did not see it himself.

"I don't feel especially well," said she, instantly on guard.

He laughed. "You'd not dare say that to yourself in the mirror.
You have wonderful color. Your eyes--there never was anything so
clear. You were always straight--that was one of the things I
admired about you. But now, you seem to be straight without the
slightest effort--the natural straightness of a sapling."

This was most agreeable, for she loved compliments, liked to
discover that the charms which she herself saw in herself were
really there. But encouraging such talk was not compatible with
the course she had laid out for herself with him. She continued
silent and cold.

"If you'd only go to sleep early, and get up early, and drop all
that the railway train carried us away from, you'd be as happy as
the birds and the deer and the fish."

"I shall not change my habits," said she tartly. "I hope you'll
drop the subject."