"Of course I could," broke in Teresa, again.

"But you don't know what I mean," said the imperturbable Low.

"Certainly I do. Why, find 'em, and preserve all the different ones for
you to write under--that's it, isn't it?"

Low nodded his head, gratified but not entirely convinced that she had
fully estimated the magnitude of the endeavor.

"I suppose," said Teresa, in the feminine postscriptum voice which it
would seem entered even the philosophical calm of the aisles they were
treading--"I suppose that SHE places great value on them?"

Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor was it at all
impossible that the singular woman walking by his side had also. He
said "Yes;" but added, in mental reference to the Linnean Society of San
Francisco, that "THEY were rather particular about the rarer kinds."

Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low's tender relations with
some favored ONE of her sex, this frank confession of a plural devotion
staggered her.

"They?" she repeated.

"Yes," he continued calmly. "The Botanical Society I correspond with are
more particular than the Government Survey."

"Then you are doing this for a society?" demanded Teresa, with a stare.