ever suspected what a
versatile genius you were? It's too wonderful how you have stepped into
this life--into the people's thoughts and feelings--as you have. When
you come back to New York--"

He looked at her, oddly she thought. "Why should I go back?"

"Why? Because it's your natural habitat. Isn't it?"

"That's the word," he said smiling. "It _was_ my habitat. This is my
home."

She was silent a moment in sheer surprise. She had thought of this
Southern essay as a quickly passing incident, a colorful chapter whose
page might any day be turned. But it was impossible to mistake his
meaning. Clearly, he was deeply infatuated with this Arcadian experience
and had no thought at present but to continue it indefinitely.

But it would pass! He was a New Yorker, after all. And what more
charming than to have an old place in such a countryside--a position
ready-made at one's hand, to step into for a month or two when ennui
made the old haunts tasteless? It was worth some cultivation. One must
anchor somewhere. Virginia was not so far from the center; splendid
estates of Northerners dotted even the Carolinas. Here one might be in
hand-touch with everything. And it was no small thing to hold one of the
oldest and proudest names in a section like this. One could always have
a town-house too--there was Washington, and there was Europe....

They were passing the entrance of a cherry-bordered lane, and without
taking his hands from the gear, he nodded toward the low broad-eaved
dwelling with its flowering arbors that showed in flashing glimpses of
brown and red between the intervening trees. "The palace of the queen!"
he said--"Rosewood, by name."

She looked in some curiosity. Clearly, if not a refuge of genteel
poverty, neither was it the abode of wealth; so, from her assured
rampart of the Fargo millions, Katharine reflected complacently. The
girl was a local favorite, of course--he had been tactful as to that. It
was fortunate, in a way, that he had not seen her, Katharine, in the
grand stand until afterward. Feeling toward her as she believed he did,
with his absurd directness, he would have been likely to drop the rose
in her lap, never reflecting that, the tourney being a local function,
the choice should not fall upon an outlander. That would not have tended
to increase his popularity in the countryside, and popularity was the
very salt of social success. So Katharine pondered, her mind, like a
capable general's, ru