" Everett's voice held to a tone of quiet lightness and he bravely
puffed his rings of smoke out on the breezes.
"Perhaps some day you'll pass us again along the road to your
Providence," said Rose Mary gently, and the wistful question was all
that her woman's tradition allowed her to ask--though her heart break
with its pride.
"Some day," answered Everett, and underneath the quiet voice sounded a
savage note and his teeth bit through his cigar, which he threw out
into the dew-carpeted grass. Just then there came from up under the
eaves a soft disturbed flutter of wings and a gentle dove note was
answered reassuringly and tenderly in kind.
"Rose Mary," he said as he turned to her and laid his hand on the step
near her, "once you materialized your heart for me, and now I'm going
to do the same for mine to you. Yours, you say, is an old gabled,
vine-clad, dove-nested country house, a shelter for the people you
love--and always kept for your Master's use. It is something just to
have had a man's road to Providence lead past the garden gate. I make
acknowledgement. And mine? I think it is like one of those squat,
heathen, Satsuma vases, inlaid with distorted figures and symbols and
toned in all luridness of color, into which has been tossed a poor
sort of flower plucked from any bush the owner happened to pass, which
has been salted down in frivolity--or perhaps something stronger.
I'll keep the lid on to-night, for _you_ wouldn't like the--perfume.
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