“You needn’t guy me,” he said, and went on painting.  But he flashed his sudden smile at her.  “Isn’t New England becoming to me, too?”

“Yes, for the summer.  It’s over-powered.  In the winter Aunt Celia calls you ‘Jerry Wilmer.’  She’s quite topping then.  But the minute you appear with European labels on your trunks and that air of speaking foreign lingo, she gives out completely.  Every time she sees your name in the paper she forgets you went to school at the Academy and built the fires.  She calls you ‘our boarder’ then, for as much as a week and a half.”

“Quit it, Mary,” said he, smiling at her again.

“Well,” said Mary, yet without turning, “I must go and weed a while.”

“No,” put in Wilmer, innocently; “he won’t be over yet.  He had a big mail.  I brought it to him.”

Mary blushed, and made as if to go.  She was a woman of thirty-five, well poised, and sweet through wholesomeness.  Her face had been cut on a regular pattern, and then some natural influence had touched it up beguilingly with contradictions.  She swung back, after her one tentative step, and sobered.

“How do you think he is looking?” she asked.

“Prime.”

“Not so—­”

“Not so morbid as when I was here last summer,” he helped her out.  “Not by any means.  Are you going to marry him, Mary?” The question had only a civil emphasis, but a warmer tone informed it.  Mary grew pink under the morning light, and Jerome went on:  “Yes, I have a perfect right to talk about it, I don’t travel three thousand miles every summer to ask you to marry me without earning some claim to frankness.  I mentioned that to Marshby himself.  We met at the station, you remember, the day I came.  We walked down together.  He spoke about my sketching, and I told him I had come on my annual pilgrimage, to ask Mary Brinsley to marry me.”

“Jerome!”

“Yes, I did.  This is my tenth pilgrimage.  Mary, will you marry me?”

“No,” said Mary, softly, but as if she liked him very much.  “No, Jerome.”

Wilmer squeezed a tube on his palette and regarded the color frowningly.  “Might as well, Mary,” said he.  “You’d have an awfully good time in Paris.”

She was perfectly still, watching him, and he went on: 

“Now you’re thinking if Marshby gets the consulate you’ll be across the water anyway, and you could run down to Paris and see the sights.  But it wouldn’t be the same thing.  It’s Marshby you like, but you’d have a better time with me.”

“It’s a foregone conclusion that the consulship will be offered him,” said Mary.  Her eyes were now on the path leading through the garden and over the wall to the neighboring house where Marshby lived.

“Then you will marry and go with him.  Ah, well, that’s finished.  I needn’t come another summer.  When you are in Paris, I can show you the boulevards and cafes.”

“It is more than probable he won’t accept the consulship.”