Camellia never seemed conscious of her fine attire--that could always
truthfully be said. Although on the present occasion she was dressed as
duchesses dress for a lawn-party, she seemed supremely unconscious of
the fact. The only trouble was that the rest of us could not be
unconscious of it.

The dinner moved slowly. We all did our best, including the Philosopher,
whose collar was slowly melting, so that he had to keep his chin well
up, lest it crush the linen hopelessly beneath. The Skeptic joked
ceaselessly, but one could see that all the time he feared his cravat
might be awry. The dinner itself was a much more formal affair than
usual--somehow that always seemed necessary when Camellia was one's
guest. We were glad when it was over and we could go back to the cool
recesses of the porch.

The next morning Camellia wore an unpretentious dress of white--one
which made the thing the Gay Lady had worn at dinner the evening before
seem to her memory poor indeed. Later in the morning the Skeptic took
Camellia boating on the river, and she went up and dressed for it in a
yachting suit of white flannel. It was some slight consolation that she
came back from the river much bedraggled about the skirts, for the boat
had sprung a leak and all the Skeptic's gallantry could not keep her
dry. But this necessitated a change before luncheon, and some of us were
nearly unable to eat with Camellia sitting there in the frock she had
put on at the last minute. She was a dream in the pale pink of it, and
the Skeptic appeared to be losing his head. On the contrary, the
Philosopher was seen to examine her thoughtfully through the eyeglasses
he sometimes wears for reading, and which he had forgotten to remove.

On the morning of the third day I discovered the Gay Lady mending a