of brilliant lights in some space beyond, from which there gushed in a wave of hothouse fragrance, warm, heavy, humid.  It was a pretty little effect for guests new to the house, and was part of Elbridge Mavering’s pleasure in this feature of his place.  Mrs. Pasmer responded with generous sympathy, for if she really liked anything with her whole heart, it was an effect, and she traversed the half-bubble by its pebbled path, showering praises right and left with a fulness and accuracy that missed no detail, while Alice followed silently, her hand in Minnie Mavering’s, and cold with suppressed excitement.  The rose-house was divided by a wall, pierced with frequent doorways, over which the trees were trained and the roses hung; and on either side were ranks of rare and costly kinds, weighed down with bud and bloom.  The air was thick with their breath and the pungent odours of the rich soil from which they grew, and the glass roof was misted with the mingled exhalations.

Mr. Mavering walked beside Alice, modestly explaining the difficulties of rose culture, and his method of dealing with the red spider.  He had a stout knife in his hand, and he cropped long, heavy-laden stems of roses from the walls and the beds, casually giving her their different names, and laying them along his arm in a massive sheaf.

Mrs. Pasmer and Eunice had gone forward with Dan, and were waiting for them at the thither end of the rose-house.

“Alice! just imagine:  the grapery is beyond this,” cried the girl’s mother.

“It’s a cold grapery,” said Mr. Mavering.  “I hope you’ll see it to-morrow.”

“Oh, why not to-night?” shouted Dan.

“Because it’s a cold grapery,” said Eunice; “and after this rose-house, it’s an Arctic grapery.  You’re crazy, Dan.”

“Well, I want Alice to see it anyway,” he persisted wilfully.  “There’s nothing like a cold grapery by starlight.  I’ll get some wraps.”  They all knew that he wished to be alone with her a moment, and the three women, consenting with their hearts, protested with their tongues, following him in his flight with their chorus, and greeting his return.  He muffled her to the chin in a fur-lined overcoat, which he had laid hands on the first thing; and her mother, still protesting, helped to tie a scarf over her hair so as not to disarrange it.  “Here,” he pointed, “we can run through it, and it’s worth seeing.  Better come,” he said to the others as he opened the door, and hurried Alice down the path under the keen sparkle of the crystal roof, blotched with the leaves and bunches of the vines.  Coming out of the dense, sensuous, vaporous air of the rose-house into this clear, thin atmosphere, delicately penetrated with the fragrance, pure and cold, of the fruit, it was as if they had entered another world.  His arm crept round her in the odorous obscurity.

“Look up!  See the stars through the vines!  But when she lifted her face he bent his upon it for a wild kiss.