"I cannot think of you yet," I stumbled, "as being here."

"Isn't it _like_ me?"

"It is a beautiful room--" I groped lamely.

"I was afraid you would say that."

"But it is. It really is."

"Then I've failed, after all."

She said it lightly enough, but there was an undertone of real
disappointment in her voice.

"I'm in rather the predicament," I said, "of old Abner Coates. You
probably don't know Abner. He sells nursery stock, and each spring when
he comes around and I tell him that the peach trees or the raspberry
bushes I bought of him the year before have not done well, he says, with
the greatest astonishment, 'Wal, now, ye ain't said what I hoped ye
would.' I see that I haven't said what you hoped I would."

It was too serious a matter, however, for Mary Starkweather to joke
about.

"But, David Grayson," she said, "isn't it _simple_?"

I glanced around me with swift new comprehension.