“Oh, I see.  You’ve already asked him to come.  You were so sure of me!  Two hours in bed after lunch, with all the windows open, remember.  Read something diverting, but not exciting; some homely British author; nothing abandonne.  And don’t make faces at me.  Until to-morrow!”

When her charming doctor had disappeared through the doorway, Kitty fell back on her cushions and closed her eyes.  Her mocking-bird, excited by the sunlight, was singing in his big gilt cage, and a white lilac-tree that had come that morning was giving out its faint sweetness in the warm room.  But Kitty looked paler and wearier than when the doctor was with her.  Even with him she rose to her part just a little; couldn’t help it.  And he took his share of her vivacity and sparkle, like every one else.  He believed that his presence was soothing to her.  But he admired; and whoever admired, blew on the flame, however lightly.

The mocking-bird was in great form this morning.  He had the best bird-voice she had ever heard, and Kitty wished there were some way to note down his improvisations; but his intervals were not expressible in any scale she knew.  Parker White had brought him to her, from Ojo Caliente, in New Mexico, where he had been trained in the pine forests by an old Mexican and an ill-tempered, lame master-bird, half thrush, that taught young birds to sing.  This morning, in his song there were flashes of silvery Southern springtime; they opened inviting roads of memory.  In half an hour he had sung his disconsolate mistress to sleep.

That evening Kitty sat curled up on the deep couch before the fire, awaiting Pierce Tevis.  Her costume was folds upon folds of diaphanous white over equally diaphanous rose, with a line of white fur about her neck.  Her beautiful arms were bare.  Her tiny Chinese slippers were embroidered so richly that they resembled the painted porcelain of old vases.  She looked like a sultan’s youngest, newest bride; a beautiful little toy-woman, sitting at one end of the long room which composed about her,—­which, in the soft light, seemed happily arranged for her.  There were flowers everywhere:  rose-trees; camellia-bushes, red and white; the first forced hyacinths of the season; a feathery mimosa-tree, tall enough to stand under.

The long front of Kitty’s study was all windows.  At one end was the fireplace, before which she sat.  At the other end, back in a lighted alcove, hung a big, warm, sympathetic interior by Lucien Simon,—­a group of Kitty’s friends having tea in the painter’s salon in Paris.  The room in the picture was flooded with early lamp-light, and one could feel the grey, chill winter twilight in the Paris streets outside.  There stood the cavalier-like old composer, who had done much for Kitty, in his most characteristic attitude, before the hearth.  Mme. Simon sat at the tea-table.  B——­, the historian, and H——­, the philologist, stood in animated discussion behind the piano, while Mme. H——­ was tying on the bonnet of her lovely little daughter.  Marcel Durand, the physicist, sat alone in a corner, his startling black-and-white profile lowered broodingly, his cold hands locked over his sharp knee.  A genial, red-bearded sculptor stood over him, about to touch him on the shoulder and waken him from his dream.