“She left George for a very rich man she met in London.  I believe he had a wife already, but things like that never stood in Florrie’s way.”

“It’s queer, isn’t it, because she really has a kind heart.”

“Yes, she is kind-hearted when you don’t get in her way, but she was born without any morality just as some people are born without any sense of smell or hearing.  I know several women over here who are like that—­American women, too—­and, do you know, they are all surprisingly successful.  Nobody seems to suspect their infirmity, least of all the men who become their victims.”

“I sometimes think,” observed Gabriella cynically, “that men like women to be without feeling.  It saves them so much trouble.”

The next day Patty fluttered off like a brilliant butterfly, and Gabriella began to suffer acute homesickness for the house in Twenty-third Street and her children.  Not once during her stay in Paris did the thought of O’Hara enter her mind; and so completely had she ceased to worry about his friendship for Archibald that it was almost a shock to her when, after landing one September afternoon, she drove up to the gate and found the man and the boy standing together beside a flourishing border of red geraniums, which appeared almost to cover the yard.

“Oh, look, Ben, there’s mother!” cried Archibald; and turning quickly, the two came to meet her.

“My darling, I thought you were still in the country,” said Gabriella, kissing her son.

“We’ve been here almost a week..  The place closed, so we decided to come back to town.  It’s much nicer here,” replied Archibald eagerly.  He looked sunburned and vigorous, and it seemed to Gabriella that he had grown prodigiously in six weeks.

“Why, you look so much taller, Archibald!” she exclaimed, laughing with happiness, “or, perhaps, I’ve been thinking of you as a little boy.”  Then, while her manner grew formal, she held out her hand to O’Hara.  “How do you do, Mr. O’Hara?”

He was standing bareheaded in the faint sunshine, and while her eyes rested on his dark red hair, still moist and burnished from brushing, his tanned and glowing face, and on the tiny flecks of black in the clear gray of his eyes, she was startled by a sensation of strangeness and unreality as if she were looking into his face for the first time.

“Oh, we’re well.  I’ve been playing with Archibald.  Did you have a good crossing?”

“It was smooth enough, but I got so impatient.  I wanted to be with the children.”

“Well, I went once, and I was jolly glad to get back again.  There was nothing to do over there but loaf and lie around.”

There would be nothing else for him, of course, she reflected; and she wondered vaguely if he had ever entered a picture gallery?  What would Europe offer to a person possessing neither culture nor a passion for clothes?

The driver had placed her bags inside the gate; and O’Hara took charge of them as if it were the most natural thing in the world to carry for a fellow tenant.  Upstairs in the sitting-room he put his burden down, unfastened the straps, and commented upon the leather of a bag she had bought in Paris.