t I had then a strange _alter ego_ deep
down somewhere within me, as the full-blown flower is in the small tight
bud, and that I just took the course, I just transferred him to the
climate, that blighted him for once and for ever."

"And you wonder about the flower," Miss Staverton said. "So do I, if you
want to know; and so I've been wondering these several weeks. I believe
in the flower," she continued, "I feel it would have been quite splendid,
quite huge and monstrous."

"Monstrous above all!" her visitor echoed; "and I imagine, by the same
stroke, quite hideous and offensive."

"You don't believe that," she returned; "if you did you wouldn't wonder.
You'd know, and that would be enough for you. What you feel--and what I
feel _for_ you--is that you'd have had power."

"You'd have liked me that way?" he asked.

She barely hung fire. "How should I not have liked you?"

"I see. You'd have liked me, have preferred me, a billionaire!"

"How should I not have liked you?" she simply again asked.

He stood before her still--her question kept him motionless. He took it
in, so much there was of it; and indeed his not otherwise meeting it
testified to that. "I know at least what I am," he simply went on; "the
other side of the medal's clear enough. I've not been edifying--I
believe I'm thought in a hundred quarters to have been barely decent.
I've followed strange paths and worshipped strange gods; it must have
come to you again and again--in fact you've admitted to me as much--that
I was leading, at any time these thirty years, a selfish frivolous
scandalous life. And you see what it has made of me."

She just waited, smiling at him. "You see what it has made of _me_."

"Oh you're a person whom nothing can have altered. You were born to be
what you are, anywhere, anyway: you've the perfection nothing else could
have blighted. And don't you see how, without my exile, I shouldn't have
been waiting till now--?" But he pulled up for the strange pang.

"The great thing to see," she presently said, "seems to me to be that it
has spoiled nothing. It hasn't spoiled your being here at last. It
hasn't spoiled this. It hasn't spoiled your speaking--" She also
however faltered.

He wondered at everything her controlled emotion might mean. "Do you
believe then--too dreadfully!--that I _am_ as good as I might ever have
been?"

"Oh no! Far from it!" With which she got up from her chair and was
nearer to hi