“I am so sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said, as she gave him her hand.  “I was an owl not to be ready for you when you told me that you would come.”

“No;—­but a bird of paradise to come to me so sweetly, and at an hour when all the other birds refuse to show the feather of a single wing.”

“And you,—­you feel like a naughty boy, do you not, in thus coming out on a Sunday morning?”

“Do you feel like a naughty girl?”

“Yes;—­just a little so.  I do not know that I should care for everybody to hear that I received visitors,—­or worse still, a visitor,—­at this hour on this day.  But then it is so pleasant to feel oneself to be naughty!  There is a Bohemian flavour of picnic about it which, though it does not come up to the rich gusto of real wickedness, makes one fancy that one is on the border of that delightful region in which there is none of the constraint of custom,—­where men and women say what they like, and do what they like.”

“It is pleasant enough to be on the borders,” said Phineas.

“That is just it.  Of course decency, morality, and propriety, all made to suit the eye of the public, are the things which are really delightful.  We all know that, and live accordingly,—­as well as we can.  I do at least.”

“And do not I, Madame Goesler?”

“I know nothing about that, Mr. Finn, and want to ask no questions.  But if you do, I am sure you agree with me that you often envy the improper people,—­the Bohemians,—­the people who don’t trouble themselves about keeping any laws except those for breaking which they would be put into nasty, unpleasant prisons.  I envy them.  Oh, how I envy them!”

“But you are free as air.”

“The most cabined, cribbed, and confined creature in the world!  I have been fighting my way up for the last four years, and have not allowed myself the liberty of one flirtation;—­not often even the recreation of a natural laugh.  And now I shouldn’t wonder if I don’t find myself falling back a year or two, just because I have allowed you to come and see me on a Sunday morning.  When I told Lotta that you were coming, she shook her head at me in dismay.  But now that you are here, tell me what you have done.”

“Nothing as yet, Madame Goesler.”

“I thought it was to have been settled on Friday?”

“It was settled,—­before Friday.  Indeed, as I look back at it all now, I can hardly tell when it was not settled.  It is impossible, and has been impossible, that I should do otherwise.  I still hold my place, Madame Goesler, but I have declared that I shall give it up before the debate comes on.”

“It is quite fixed?”

“Quite fixed, my friend.”