"But you know it's not--it's just--er--" She wanted to retort with the witty brilliance that the occasion demanded, and what she said was, "It's just hot air and you oughtn't to."

Then she felt her failure so acutely that she blushed, and to hide it buried her chin in her fur and sniffed at the violets on her breast.

His voice came, close to her ear, very kind, as if he hadn't noticed the blush,

"Well, then, I'll express it differently. I'll say you're just charming.

Will that do?"

"I don't think I am. It sounds like someone smaller. I'm too big to be charming."

That made him laugh, a jolly ringing note.

"Whatever _you_ think you are, _I_ think you're the most delightful person in San Francisco."

The silks rustled again. Chrystie lifted her eyes from the violets to the bench opposite from which two Italian women were watching with deep interest this coquetting of the lordlings.

"Now you're making fun of me," she said, like a wounded child.

"Oh, dear lady," it was he who was wounded, misunderstood, hurt, "how unkind and how untrue. Could I make fun of anyone I admired, I respected, I--er--thought as much of as I do of you?"

She looked down at her m.u.f.f. Just for a moment he thought her shyness was quite winning.

"I don't know--I don't know you well enough. But you've been everywhere and seen everything, and I must seem so--so--sort of stupid and like a kid. I don't know what you think, but I know that's the way I feel when I'm with you."

The Italian women were aware of a slight movement on the part of the aristocratic gentleman which suggested an intention of laying his hand upon that of the golden-haired lady. Then he evidently thought better of it, and his hand dropped to the head of his cane. The golden-haired lady had seen it, too, and affrighted slid her own into the shelter of her m.u.f.f. With down-drooped head she heard the cultured accents of the only perfect nugget she had ever met murmur reproachfully.

"Now it's _you_ who are making fun of _me_. Why, _I'm_ the one who feels stupid and tongue-tied. I'm the one who comes away from you abashed and embarra.s.sed. And why, do you suppose? Because I feel I've been with someone who's so much finer than all the others. Not the pert, smart girl of dinners and dances, but someone genuine and sincere and sweet"--his glance touched the bunch of violets--"as sweet as those violets you're wearing."

Chrystie experienced a feeling of astonishment, mixed with an uplifting exaltation. Staring before her she struggled to adjust the familiar sense of her shortcomings with this revelation of herself as a creature of compelling charm. She was so thrilled she forgot her pose and murmured incredulously,

"Really?"

"Very really. Why are you so modest, little Miss Alston?"

"I didn't know I was."

"Wonderfully so--amazingly so. But perhaps it's part of you. It is so sometimes with a beautiful woman."

"Beautiful? Oh, no, Mr. Mayer."

"Oh, yes, Miss Alston."

Chrystie began to feel as if she was coming to life after a long period of deadness. She had a consciousness of sudden growth, of expanding and outflowering, of bursting into glowing bloom. A smile that she tried to repress broke out on her lips, the repression causing it to be one-sided, which gave it piquancy. She was invaded by a heady sense of exhilaration and a new confidence, daring, almost reckless. It made it possible for her to quell a rush of embarra.s.sment and lead the conversation like a woman of the world:

"You're mistaken about my being modest. Everybody who knows me well says I'm spoiled."

"Who's spoiled you?"

"Lorry and Aunt Ellen and Fong."

She gave him a quick side glance, met his eyes, and they both laughed, a light-hearted mingling of treble and ba.s.s.

The Italian women breathed deeply on their bench, aware that the interchanged glances and chimed laughter had advanced the romance on its happy way.

"Three people can't do any serious spoiling--there should be at least four. Who's Fong?"

"Our Chinaman; he's been with us for centuries."

"Let me make the fourth. Put me on the list."

"I think you've put yourself there without being invited. Since we sat down you've done nothing but pay me compliments."

"Never mind that. Here's a sensible suggestion: I'll judge myself if you're spoiled and if I think you are I won't pay you one more. Isn't that fair?"

"I think so."

"Very well. Of course I must know you better, have a talk with you before I can be sure. How can we arrange that? Ah--I have it! Some bright afternoon like this we might take a walk together."

"Yes, we could do that."

"We might go to the park--it's wonderful there on days like this."

She nodded and said slowly,

"And we could take Lorry."

"To be sure, if she'd care to come."

There was a slight pause and he saw by her profile there was doubt in her mind.

"I don't know about her caring. Lorry doesn't like walking much."

"Then why ask her to do it?"

She stroked her m.u.f.f, evidently discomfited.

"Well, you see, it's this way, I don't think Lorry'd like me to go with you alone."

"But why?" He drew himself up from the bench's back, his tone surprised, slightly offended. "Surely having invited me to her house, she could have no objection to my going for a stroll with you?"

"No, no--" Her discomfort was obvious now. "It isn't _you_. It's just that father was very particular and Lorry always tries to do what he would have liked."

"My dear young lady, your father's been dead a good many years. Things have changed since then; the customs of his day are not the customs of ours. Of course I wouldn't suggest that you go counter to your sister's wishes, but"--he turned away from her, huffy, head high, a gentleman flouted in his pride--"it's rather absurd from my point of view. Oh, well, we'll say no more about it."

Chrystie was distracted. It was not only the humiliation of appearing out of date and provincial; it was something much worse than that. She saw Boye Mayer retiring in majestic indignation and not coming back, leaving her at this first real blossoming of their friendship because Lorry had ideas that the rest of the world had abandoned with hoop skirts and chignons.

"Why, why," she stammered, alarm pushing her to the recklessness of the desperate, "couldn't we go and not tell her? It's--it's--just a prejudice of Lorry's--no one else feels that way. The Barlow girls, who've been very strictly brought up, go walking and even go to the theater with"--she was going to say "their nuggets" and then changed with a gasp to--"the men their mother asks to her parties."

So Chrystie, guileless and subjugated, a.s.sisted in the development of the Idea. She made an engagement to meet Mr. Mayer four days later in the Plaza and go with him to see the orchids in the park greenhouse. The Holy Spirit orchid was in bloom and she had never seen it. A flower with such a name as the Holy Spirit seemed to Chrystie in some way to shed an element of propriety if not righteousness over the adventure.