"As I was just now--taking tea with your mother and sisters."

Durham's "Oh!" of surprise betrayed also a note of disillusionment,
which she met only by the reconciling murmur: "Shall we sit down?"

He found two of the springy yellow chairs indigenous to the spot,
and placed them under the tree near which they had paused, saying
reluctantly, as he did so: "Of course it was an immense pleasure to
_them_ to see you again."

"Oh, not in the same way. I mean--" she paused, sinking into the
chair, and betraying, for the first time, a momentary inability to
deal becomingly with the situation. "I mean," she resumed smiling,
"that it was not an event for them, as it was for me."

"An event?" he caught her up again, eagerly; for what, in the
language of any civilization, could that word mean but just the one
thing he most wished it to?

"To be with dear, good, sweet, simple, real Americans again!" she
burst out, heaping up her epithets with reckless prodigality.

Durham's smile once more faded to impersonality, as he rejoined,
just a shade on the defensive: "If it's merely our Americanism you
enjoyed--I've no doubt we can give you all you want in that line."

"Yes, it's just that! But if you knew what the word means to me! It
means--it means--" she paused as if to assure herself that they were
sufficiently isolated from the desultory groups beneath the other
trees--"it means that I'm _safe_ with them: as safe as in a bank!"