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 'I don't know. I don't care, really.' As she spoke she pressed her face against the window-pane, gazing upon the backward-reeling landscape, and wondered if this were true. Jones had been like celluloid, a spurt of flame and all was over. This was not love, and suddenly her heart ached for it, the love that Anthony had refused her, and had refused to take from her, although she knew herself capable of giving it.

Something of love she might have learned from Augustus's anxious face and staring china eyes. He made elaborate pretence of being in New York on business and happening to hear of the ladies' arrival at Mrs. Gower's Fashionable Boarding House, where they would stay for a few days pending the Diana's loading and sailing.

They walked the park all Friday afternoon in the melting sweetness of a premature spring day. He told her how spring, to him, always was personified by a dainty lady with ruffled skirts, silk mits, and flowered bonnet. Instantly before Lanice's eyes came the picture of a gay hoyden with bare, muddy feet, draggled petticoats, tousled hair, roguish eyes, beguiling but slightly vulgar voice. She tried to tell Augustus of this muddy primavera, but the idea vaguely hurt him and he began to protest that none of her own qualities more greatly engaged him than her exquisite tidiness. 'Oh, dear,' she thought, 'he's off again,' and smirked at him so he would keep it up.