"Carnation, alabaster, gold and fire."

It was not a bad line, he thought.

After dinner, he felt a little more amiable, and so he sat down and wrote
his first real letter to his fiancee.

"If we were really engaged, my dear Christine," he wrote, "you would have
had a night letter long before this, asking you to explain to me just how
it was that you did look on that amorous young poet. His verse is pretty
enough, though I can't say I exactly enjoyed it. However, my native town
thinks very highly of him, and intends to ask him to come and address one
of our local organizations. If so, I shall have an opportunity of
questioning him on the subject of the sources of his inspiration. 'Is
Helen a real person?' I shall ask. 'Not so very,' I can imagine his
replying. Ah, what would we both give to know?

"My friends here, stimulated by Dorothy Lane's ravishing description of
you, have asked many times to see your picture. I am ashamed of my own
carelessness in having gone away without obtaining one for exhibition
purposes. Will you send me one at once? One not already in circulation
among poets and painters. I will set it on my writing table, and allow my
eyes to stray sentimentally toward it whenever I have people to dinner.

"By the way, the day I left New York I told a florist to send you flowers
every day. We worked out quite an elaborate scheme for every day in the
week. Did he ever do it?

"Yours, at least in the sight of this company,

"MAX RIATT."

In answer to this, he was surprised by a telegram:

"So sorry for absurd mistake. Entirely misunderstood source of the
flowers. Enjoy them a great deal more now. Yes, they come regularly. A
thousand thanks. Am sending photograph by mail."

Riatt did not need to ask himself from whom she had imagined they came.
Not the poet, unless magazine rates were rising unduly. Nor Hickson, who
failed a little in such attentions. No, it was Linburne--and evidently
Linburne's attentions were taken so much as a matter of course, that she
had not even thanked him, nor had he noticed her omission.

He did not answer the telegram, nor did he acknowledge the photograph
but, true to his word, he established it at once on his desk in a frame
which he spent a long time in selecting. The picture represented
Christine at her most queenly and unapproachable. She wore the black and
gold dress, and the huge feather fan was folded across her bare arms.
Every time he looked at it, he rememb