“Art.  High art.”

“How did you get up there?”

“Ladder.  High ladder.”

“You know that isn’t what I mean at all.”

“Oh!  Well, I’ve taken a contract to tone down the Midway aspect of your highly respectable residence.  One hour per day.”

“If you think that this performance is going to do you any good—­” she began with withering intonation.

“It’s done that already,” he hastened to assert.  “You’ve recognized my existence again.”

“Only through trickery.”

“On the contrary, it’s no trick at all to improve on the Mordaunt Estate’s art.  Now that we’ve made up again, Miss or Mrs. Leffingwell, as the case may be—­”

“We haven’t made up.  There’s nothing to make up.”

“Amended to ‘Now that we’re on speaking terms once more.’  Accepted?  Thank you.  Then let me thank you for those lovely flowers you’ve been sending me.  You can’t imagine how they brighten and sweeten my simple and unlovely van life, with their—­”

“Mr. Dyke!” Her eyes were flashing now and her color was deeper than the pink of the roses which she had rejected.  “You must know that you had no right to send me flowers and that in returning them—­”

“Returning?  But, dear lady—­or girl, as the case may be [here she stamped a violent foot]—­if you feel it your duty to return them, why not return them to the florist or the sender?  Marked though my attentions may have been, does that justify you in assuming that I am, so to speak, the only floral prospect in the park?  There’s the Dominie, for instance.  He’s notoriously your admirer, and I’ve seen him at Eberling’s quite lately.” (Mendacious young scoundrel!)

For the moment she was beguiled by the plausibility of his manner.

“How should he know that pink roses are my favorites?” she said uncertainly.

“How should I, for that matter?” he retorted at once.  “Though any idiot could see at a glance that you’re at least half sister to the whole rose tribe.”

“Now you’re beginning again,” she complained.  “You see, it’s impossible to treat you as an ordinary acquaintance.”

“But what do you think of me as a painter-man?” inquired the bewildering youth.

Preparatory to entering the house she had taken off her gloves, and now one pinky-brown hand rested on the door lintel below him.  “The question is,” said she, “wasn’t it really you that sent the roses, and don’t you realize that you mustn’t?”

“The question is,” he repeated, “whether, being denied the ordinary avenues of approach to a shrine, one is justified in jumping the fence with one’s votive offerings.  Now I hold—­”

Her left hand, shifting a little, flashed a gleam of gold into his eager eyes, striking him into silence.  When he spoke again, all the vividness was gone from his voice.  “I beg your pardon,” he said.  “Yes; I sent the roses.  You shan’t be troubled again in that way—­or any other way.  Do you mind if I finish this job?”