“Such humility is charming,” answered Eve, breaking off a tiny spray and tossing it to him.  “There; aren’t you awfully surprised?  Please look so.”

Wade struck an attitude and made a grimace which to a third person would have indicated wild alarm.

“Oh, dear,” laughed Eve, “if that’s your idea of looking pleasant I’d hate to see you in an earthquake!”

Wade placed the spray in his buttonhole.  “Thank you,” he said, “I shall have quite a collection—­”

“You were going to say?” asked Eve politely as he paused.

“I was going to say”—­he paused again.  “You know I already have a spray of this that belongs to you.”  He shot a quick, curious glance at her.

“You have?  And where did you get it?”

Wade lighted his pipe very deliberately.

“You dropped it outside my window the other day.”

“Oh!” said Eve, with a careless laugh.

“I’m afraid that must be withered by this time.”

“It is,” said Wade.  There was no reply to this, and he looked up to find her gazing idly at the pages of her book, which she was ruffling with her fingers.  “I’m keeping you from reading,” he said.

“No, I don’t want to read.  It’s not interesting.”

“May I see what it is?” She held the cover up for his inspection.

“Have you read it?” she asked.  He shook his head slowly.

“I don’t read many novels, and those I do read I forget all about the next minute.  Of course I try to keep up with the important ones, the ones folks always ask you about, like Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s and Miss Wharton’s.”

“Yes?  And do you like them?”

“I suppose so,” he replied, dubiously.  “I think the last one I read was ‘The Fruit of Mirth.’  I didn’t care very much for that, did you?  If I’d had my way I’d have passed around the morphine to the whole bunch early in the book.”

Eve smiled.  “I’m afraid you wouldn’t care for this one either,” she said, indicating the book in her lap.  “I heard this described as ’forty chapters of agony and two words of relief.’”

“‘The End,’ eh?  That was clever.  You write stories yourself, don’t you?”

“Of a sort, stories for little children about fairies, usually.  They don’t amount to much.”

“I’ll bet they’re darn—­mighty good,” said Wade, stoutly.

“I wish they were ‘darned good,’” she laughed.  “If they were they’d sell better.  I used to write little things for our college paper, and then, when papa died, and there wasn’t very much left after the executors had got through, writing seemed about the only thing I could do.  I took some stories to the magazine that papa was editor of, and they were splendid to me.  They couldn’t use them, but they told me where to take them and I sold several.  That was the beginning.  Now I’m fast becoming a specialist in ‘Once-Upon-a-Time’ stories.”