“It was very nice of you,” she said, “to come and help me entertain Belle’s friends, especially when they are all so young.”

“Yes,” he replied.  “I am a happy monument of self-sacrifice.”

“But not a brazen one,” she added quickly.

“No, nor a bronze one, either,” he said, and a sudden gloom gathered in his large dark eyes.

She had always admired the pallor of his face.  “It set off his superb brown eyes and heavy mustache so finely,” she was accustomed to say.  But this evening for some reason she wished that there was a little more bronze on his cheek and decision in his manner.  His aristocratic pallor was a trifle too great, and he seemed a little frail to satisfy even her ideal of manhood.

She said, in gentle solicitude, “You do not look well this spring.  I fear you are not very strong.”

He glanced at her quickly, but in her kindly blue eyes and in every line of her lovely face he saw only friendly regard—­perhaps more, for her features were not designed for disguises.  After a moment he replied, with a quiet bitterness which both pained and mystified her: 

“You are right.  I am not strong.”

“But summer is near,” she resumed earnestly.  “You will soon go to the country, and will bring back this fall bronze in plenty, and the strength of bronze.  Mother says we shall go to Saratoga.  That is one of your favorite haunts, I believe, so I shall have the pleasure, perhaps, of drinking ‘your very good health’ some bright morning before breakfast.  Which is your favorite spring?”

“I do not know.  I will decide after I have learned your choice.”

“That’s an amiable weakness.  I think I shall like Saratoga.  The great hotels contain all one wishes for amusement.  Then everything about town is so nice, pretty, and sociable.  The shops, also, are fine.  Too often we have spent our summers in places that were a trifle dreary.  Mountains oppress me with a sense of littleness, and their wildness frightens me.  The ocean is worse still.  The moment I am alone with it, such a lonely, desolate feeling creeps over me—­oh, I can’t tell you!  I fear you think I am silly and frivolous.  You think I ought to be inspired by the shaggy mountains and wild waves and all that.  Well, you may think so—­I won’t tell fibs.  I don’t think mother is frivolous, and she feels as I do.  We are from the South, and like things that are warm, bright, and sociable.  The ocean always seemed to me so large and cold and pitiless—­to care so little for those in its power.”

“In that respect it’s like the world, or rather the people in it—­”