freshness until my tour of the gardens should be finished and the moment

for me to return upon the boat should arrive, but he also honored me with
his own special company; and instead of depositing me in one of the

groups of other travellers, he took me to see the sights alone, as if I
were somebody too distinguished to receive my impressions with the common

herd. Thus I was able to linger here and there, and even to return to
certain points for another look.

I shall not attempt to describe the azaleas at Live Oaks. You will
understand me quite well, I am sure, when I say that I had heard the peo-

ple at Mrs. Trevise's house talk so much about them, and praise them so
superlatively, that I was not prepared for much: my experience of life

had already included quite a number of azaleas. Moreover, my meeting with
Hortense and Charley had taken me far away from flowers. But when that

marvelous place burst upon me, I forgot Hortense. I have seen gardens,
many gardens, in England, in France; in Italy; I have seen what can be

done in great hothouses, and on great terraces; what can be done under a
roof, and what can be done in the open air with the aid of architecture

and sculpture and ornamental land and water; but no horticulture that I
have seen devised by mortal man approaches the unearthly enchantment of

the azaleas at Live Oaks. It was not like seeing flowers at all; it was
as if there, in the heart of the wild and mystic wood, in the gray gloom

of those trees veiled and muffled in their long webs and skeins of
hanging moss, a great, magic flame of rose and red and white burned

steadily. You looked to see it vanish; you could not imagine such a thing
would stay. All idea of individual petals or species was swept away in

this glowing maze of splendor, this transparentlabyrinth of rose and red
and white, through which you looked beyond, into the gray gloom of the

hanging moss and the depths of the wild forest trees.
I turned back as often as I could, and to the last I caught glimpses of

it, burning, glowing, and shining like some miracle, some rainbow
exorcism, with its flooding fumes of orange-rose and red and white,

merging magically. It was not until I reached the landing, and made my
way on board again, that Hortense returned to my thoughts. She hadn't come

to see the miracle; not she! I knew that better than ever. And who was
the other man in the launch?

"Wasn't it perfectly elegant!" exclaimed the up-country bride. And upon
my assenting, she made a further declaration to David: "It's just aivry

bit as good as the Isle of Champagne."
This I discovered to be a comic opera, mounted with spendthrift

brilliance, which David had taken her to see at the town of Gonzales,
just before they were married.

As we made our way down the bending river she continued to make many
observations to me in that up-country accent of hers, which is a fashion

of speech that may be said to differ as widely from the speech of the
low-country as cotton differs from rice. I began to fear that, in spite

of my truly good intentions, I was again failing to be as "attentive" as
the occasion demanded; and so I presented her with my floral tribute.

She was immediately arch. "I'd surely be depriving somebody!" and on this
I got to the full her limpid look.

I assured her that this would not be so, and pointed to the other flowers
I had.

Accordingly, after a little more archness, she took them, as she had, of
course, fully meant to do from the first; she also took a woman's

revenge. "I'll not be any more lonesome going down than I was coming up,"
she said. "David's enough." And this led me definitely to conclude that

David had secured a helpmate who could take care of herself, in spite of
the limpidity of her eyes.

A steel wasp? Again that misleading description of Mrs. Weguelin St.
Michael's, to which, since my early days in Kings Port, my imagination

may be said to have been harnessed, came back into my mind. I turned its
injustice over and over beneath the light which the total Hortense now

shed upon it--or rather, not the total Hortense, but my whole impression
of her, as far as I had got; I got a good deal further before we had

finished. To the slow, soft accompaniment of these gliding river shores,
where all the shadows had changed since morning, so that new loveliness

stood revealed at every turn, my thoughts dwelt upon this perfected
specimen of the latest American moment--so late that she contained

nothing of the past, and a great deal of to-morrow. I basked myself in
the memory of her achieved beauty, her achieved dress, her achieved

insolence, her luxurious complexity. She was even later than those quite
late athletic girls, the Amazons of the links, whose big, hard football

faces stare at one from public windows and from public punts, whose
giant, manly strides take them over leagues of country and square miles

of dance-floor, and whose bursting, blatant, immodest health glares upon
sea-beaches and round supper tables. Hortense knew that even now the hour

of such is striking, and that the American boy will presently turn with
relief to a creature who will more clearly remind him that he is a man

and that she is a woman.
But why was the insolence of Hortense offensive, when the insolence of

Eliza La Heu was not? Both these extremelyfeminine beings could exercise
that quality in profusion, whenever they so wished; wherein did the

difference lie? Perhaps I thought, in the spirit of its exercise; Eliza
was merely insolent when she happened to feel like it; and man has always

been able to forgive woman for that--whether the angels do or not, but
Hortense, the world-wise, was insolent to all people who could not be of

use to her; and all I have to say is, that if the angels can forgive
them, they're welcome; I can't!

Had I made sure of anything at the landing? Yes; Hortense didn't care for
Charley in the least, and never would. A woman can stamp her foot at a

man and love him simultaneously; but those two light taps, and the
measure that her eyes took of Charley, meant that she must love his

possessions very much to be able to bear him at all.
Then, what was her feeling about John Mayrant? As Beverly had said, what

could she want him for? He hadn't a thing that she valued or needed. His
old-time notions of decency, the clean simplicity of his make, his good

Southern position, and his collection of nice old relatives--what did
these assets look like from an automobile, or on board the launch of a

modern steam yacht? And wouldn't it be amusing if John should grow need-
lessly jealous, and have a "difficulty" with Charley? not a mere flinging

of torn paper money in the banker's face, but some more decided
punishment for the banker's presuming to rest his predatory eyes upon

John's affianced lady.
I stared at the now broadening river, where the reappearance of the

bridge, and of Kings Port, and the nearer chimneys pouring out their
smoke a few miles above the town, betokened that our excursion was

drawing to its end. And then from the chimney's neighborhood, from the
waterside where their factories stood, there shot out into the smoothness

of the stream a launch. It crossed into our course ahead of us, preceded
us quickly, growing soon into a dot, went through the bridge, and so was

seen no longer; and its occupants must have reached town a good half hour
before we did. And now, suddenly, I was stunned with a great discovery.

The bride's voice sounded in my ear. "Well, I'll always say you're a
prophet, anyhow!"

I looked at her, dull and dazed by the internalcommotion the discovery
had raised in me.

"You said we wouldn't get stuck in the mud, and we didn't," said the
bride.

I pointed to the chimneys. "Are those the phosphate works?"
"Yais. Didn't you know?"

"The V-C phosphate works?"
"Why, yais. Haven't you been to see them yet? He ought to, oughtn't he,

David? 'Specially now they've found those deposits up the river were just
as rich as they hoped, after all."

"Whose? Mr. Mayrant's?" I asked with such sharpness that the bride was
surprised.

David hadn't attended to the name. It was some trust estate, he thought;
Regent Tom, or some such thing

"And they thought it was no good," said the bride. "And it's aivry bit as