for a talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demand
for that before them all. It was a transparent manoeuver of her
mother's who had been watching my face, that sent us out at last
together to do something--I forget now what--in one of the greenhouses.
Whatever that little mission may have been it was the merest, most
barefaced excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don't
think it got done.

Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of
the hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley between
staging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big
branching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to make
an impervious cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy she
stopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay.

"Isn't the maidenhair fern lovely?" she said, and looked at me with
eyes that said, "NOW."

"Nettie," I began, "I was a fool to write to you as I did."

She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But
she said nothing, and stood waiting.

"Nettie," I plunged, "I can't do without you. I--I love you."

"If you loved me," she said trimly, watching the white fingers
she plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, "could you
write the things you do to me?"

"I don't mean them," I said. "At least not always."