But if some limner had been told the whole truth of what she was and been requested to imagine a fitting body for such a soul, he would never have painted Mrs. Conyers as she looked.  Nature is not frank in her characterizations, lest we remain infants in discernment.  She allows foul to appear fair, and bids us become educated in the hardy virtues of insight and prudence.  Education as yet had advanced but little; and the deepest students in the botany of women have been able to describe so few kinds that no man, walking through the perfumed enchanted wood, knows at what moment he may step upon or take hold of some unknown deadly variety.

As the moments passed, she stopped rocking and peered toward the front gate under the lamp-post, saying to herself: 

“He is late.”

At last the gate was gently opened and gently shut.

“Ah,” she cried, leaning back in her chair smiling and satisfied.  Then she sat up rigid.  A change passed over her such as comes over a bird of prey when it draws its feathers in flat against its body to lessen friction in the swoop.  She unconsciously closed the little fan, the little handkerchief disappeared somewhere.

As the gate had opened and closed, on the bricks of the pavement was heard only the tap of his stout walking-stick; for he was gouty and wore loose low shoes of the softest calfskin, and these made no noise except the slurring sound of slippers.

Once he stopped, and planting his cane far out in the grass, reached stiffly over and with undisguised ejaculations of discomfort snipped off a piece of heliotrope in one of the tubs of oleander.  He shook away the raindrops and drew it through his buttonhole, and she could hear his low “Ah! ah! ah!” as he thrust his nose down into it.

“There’s nothing like it,” he said aloud as though he had consenting listeners, “it outsmells creation.”

He stopped at another tub of flowers where a humming-bird moth was gathering honey and jabbed his stick sharply at it, taking care that the stick did not reach perilously near.

“Get away, sir,” he said; “you’ve had enough, sir.  Get away, sir.”

Having reached a gravel walk that diverged from the pavement, he turned off and went over to a rose-bush and walked around tapping the roses on their heads as he counted them—­cloth-of-gold roses.  “Very well done,” he said, “a large family—­a good sign.”

Thus he loitered along his way with leisure to enjoy all the chance trifles that gladdened it; for he was one of the old who return at the end of life to the simple innocent things that pleased them as children.

She had risen and advanced to the edge of the veranda.

“Did you come to see me or did you come to see my flowers?” she called out charmingly.

“I came to see the flowers, madam,” he called back.  “Most of all, the century plant:  how is she?”

She laughed delightedly:  “Still harping on my age, I see.”