"It's a cold grapery," said Mr. Mavering. "I hope you'll see it
to-morrow."

"Oh, why not to-night?" shouted Dan.

"Because it's a cold grapery," said Eunice; "and after this rose-house,
it's an Arctic grapery. You're crazy, Dan."

"Well, I want Alice to see it anyway," he persisted wilfully. "There's
nothing like a cold grapery by starlight. I'll get some wraps." They all
knew that he wished to be alone with her a moment, and the three women,
consenting with their hearts, protested with their tongues, following
him in his flight with their chorus, and greeting his return. He muffled
her to the chin in a fur-lined overcoat, which he had laid hands on the
first thing; and her mother, still protesting, helped to tie a scarf
over her hair so as not to disarrange it. "Here," he pointed, "we can
run through it, and it's worth seeing. Better come," he said to the
others as he opened the door, and hurried Alice down the path under the
keen sparkle of the crystal roof, blotched with the leaves and bunches
of the vines. Coming out of the dense, sensuous, vaporous air of the
rose-house into this clear, thin atmosphere, delicately penetrated
with the fragrance, pure and cold, of the fruit, it was as if they had
entered another world. His arm crept round her in the odorous obscurity.

"Look up! See the stars through the vines! But when she lifted her face
he bent his upon it for a wild kiss.

"Don't! don't!" she murmured. "I want to think; I don't know what I'm
doing."

"Neither do I. I feel as if I were a blessed ghost."

Perhaps it is only in these ecstasies of the senses that the soul
ever reaches self-consciousness on earth; and it seems to be only the
man-soul which finds itself even in this abandon. The woman-soul has
always something else to think of.

"What shall we do," said the girl, "if we--Oh, I dread to meet your
mother! Is she like either of your sisters?"

"No," he cried joyously; "she's like me. If you're not afraid of me, and
you don't seem to be--"

"You're all I have--you're all I have in the world. Do you think she'll
like me? Oh, do you love me, Dan?"

"You darling! you divine--" The rest was a mad embrace. "If you're not
afraid of me, you won't mind mother. I wanted you here alone for just
a last word, to tell you you needn't be afraid; to tell you to--But I
needn't tell you how to act. You mustn't treat her as an invalid--you
must treat her like any one else; that's what she likes. But you'll