“You find blue—­becoming?”

“Adorable,” he replied, fervently.  “I have dreamed of you in blue.  You wore blue only the night before last, when I wrote my little sketch of ‘The Pavements of Bond Street on a Summer Afternoon.’”

She pointed to the journal which lay at her feet.

“I recognized myself, of course,” she declared, trying to speak severely.  “It was most improper of you.”

“It was nothing of the sort,” he answered bluntly.  “You came into the picture and I could not keep you out.  You were there, so you had to stay.”

“It was much too flattering,” she objected.

Again he contradicted her.

“I could not flatter if I tried,” he assured her.  “It was just you.”

She laughed softly.

“It is so difficult to argue with you,” she murmured.  “All the same, I think that it was most improper.  But then everything you do is improper.  You had no right to climb over that wall, you had no right to walk here with me the other afternoon, even though you had driven away a tame cow.  You have no right whatever to be here to-day.  What about your wife?”

“I have been to Garden Green,” he announced.  “I offered her emancipation, the same emancipation as that which I myself have attained.  She refused it absolutely.  She is satisfied with Garden Green.”

“You mean,” the girl asked, “that she refuses the—­the—­”

“Beans,” he said.  “Precisely!  She did more than refuse them—­she threw them out of the window.  She has no imagination.  From her point of view I suppose she behaved in a perfectly natural fashion.  She told me to go my own way and leave her alone.”

Edith sighed.

“It is very unfortunate,” she declared, “that you were not able to convince her.”

“Is it?” he replied.  “I tried my best, and when I had failed I was glad.”

She raised her eyes for a moment but she shook her head.

“I am afraid that it doesn’t make any difference, does it?

“Why not?  It makes all the difference,” he insisted.

“My dear Mr. Burton,” she expostulated, making room for him to sit down beside her, “I cannot possibly allow you to make love to me because your wife refuses to swallow a bean!”

“But she threw them out of the window!” he persisted.  “She understood quite well what she was doing.  Her action was entirely symbolical.  She declared for Garden Green and the vulgar life.”

For a girl who lived in an old-fashioned garden, and who seemed herself to be part of a fairy story, Edith certainly took a practical view of the situation.

“I am afraid,” she murmured, “that the Divorce Courts have no jurisdiction over your case.  You are therefore a married man, and likely to continue a married man.  I cannot possibly allow you to hold my hand.”

His head swam for a moment.  She was very alluring with her pale face set in its clouds of golden hair, her faintly wrinkled forehead, her bewitchingly regretful smile—­regretful, yet in a sense provocative.