k his head and chuckled
knowingly, "Well, Mr. Yaverland, that is not how we do business in
Scotland," and suggested that it might be wise to retain some part of
the property: the orange grove, for instance. At that Yaverland was
silent for a moment, and then replied with an august, sweet-tempered
insolence that he couldn't see why he should, since he wasn't a
marmalade fancier. "Besides, that's an impossible proposition. It's like
selling a suburban villa and retaining an interest in the geranium
bed...." In the warm, interesting atmosphere she detected an intimation
of enmity between the two men; and it was like catching a caraway seed
under a tooth while one was eating a good cake. She was disturbed and
wanted to intervene, to warn the stranger that he made Mr. Philip dizzy
by talking like that. And the reflection came to her that it would be
sweet, too, to tell him that he could talk like that to her for ever,
that he could go on as he was doing, being much more what one expected
of an opera than a client, and she would follow him all the way. But it
struck her suddenly and chillingly that she had no reason to suppose
that he would be interested. His talk was in the nature of a monologue.
He showed no sign of desiring any human companionship.

Still, he was wonderful. She did not take it as warning of any coldness
or unkindness in him that it was impossible to imagine him linked by a
human relationship to any ordinary person like herself; there are
pictures too fine for private ownership. Just then he was being
particularly fine in an exciting way. He sat up very straight, flung out
his great arm with a gesture of abandonment, and said that he would have
no more to do with this house. So might a conqueror speak of a city he
was weary of looting. He wanted to sell it outright, and desired Mr.
Philip to undertake the whole business of concluding the sale with the
Rio agents. "It's all here," he said, and took from his pocket-book a
packet of letters. "They hold the title-deeds and you'll see how things
are getting on with the deal. But I suppose the language will be a
difficulty. I can read you these, of course, but how will you carry on
the correspondence?"

"Och, we can send out to a translator--"

A tingling ran through Ellen's veins. The men's words, uttered on one
side in irritated languor and on the other with empty spruceness, had
suddenly lifted her to the threshold of life. She had previsioned many
moments