without any sort of human contact? I don't see how you carry on the common
business of life."

She looked at me as if I were talking some strange tongue, and her
answer was so little of an answer that I was considerably irritated.
"We go to bed very early--earlier than you would believe."
I was on the point of saying that this only deepened the mystery when she
gave me some relief by adding, "Before you came we were not so private.
But I never have been out at night."

"Never in these fragrant alleys, blooming here under your nose?"

"Ah," said Miss Tita, "they were never nice till now!" There was
an unmistakable reference in this and a flattering comparison,
so that it seemed to me I had gained a small advantage.
As it would help me to follow it up to establish a sort of
grievance I asked her why, since she thought my garden nice,
she had never thanked me in any way for the flowers I had been
sending up in such quantities for the previous three weeks.
I had not been discouraged--there had been, as she would
have observed, a daily armful; but I had been brought up
in the common forms and a word of recognition now and then
would have touched me in the right place.

"Why I didn't know they were for me!"

"They were for both of you. Why should I make a difference?"

Miss Tita reflected as if she might by thinking of a reason for that,
but she failed to produce one. Instead of this she asked abruptly,