“Convention is made up of many idiotic laws.  Why we feel obliged to obey is beyond offhand study.  Of course, the main block is sensible; it holds humanity together.  It’s the irritating, burr-like amendments that one rages against.  It’s the same in politics.  Some clear-headed fellow gets up and makes a just law.  His enemies and his friends alike realize that if the law isn’t passed there will be a roar from the public.  So they pass the bill with amendments.  In other words, they kill its usefulness.  I suppose that’s why I am always happy to leave convention behind, to be sent to the middle of Africa, to Patagonia, or sign an agreement to go to the North Pole.”

“The North Pole?  Have you been to the Arctic?”

“No; but I expect to go up in June with an Italian explorer.”

“Isn’t it terribly lonely up there?”

“It can’t be worse than the Sahara or our own Death Valley.  One extreme is as bad as the other.  Some time I hope your father will take me along on one of those treasure hunts.  I should like to be in at the finding of a pirate ship.  It would make a boy out of me again.”

His eyes were very handsome when he smiled.  Boy? she thought.  He was scarce more than that now.

“Pirates’ gold!  What a lure it has been, is, and will be!  Blood money, brrr!  I can see no pleasure in touching it.  And the poor, pathetic trinkets, which once adorned some fair neck!  It takes a man’s mind to pass over that side of the picture, and see only the fighting.  But humanity has gone on.  The pirate is no more, and the highwayman is a thing to laugh at.”

“Thanks to railways and steamships.  It is beautiful here.”

“We are nearly always here in the summer.  In the winter we cruise.  But this winter we remained at home.  It was splendid.  The snow was deep, and often I joined the village children on their bobsleds.  I made father ride down once.  He grumbled about making a fool of himself.  After the first slide, I couldn’t keep him off the hill.  He wants to go to St. Moritz next winter.”  She laughed joyously.

“I shall take the Arctic trip,” he said to himself irrelevantly.

“Let us go and pick some apple blossoms.  They last such a little while, and they are so pretty on the table.  So you were in Napoleon’s tomb that day?  I have cried over the king of Rome’s toys.  Did Mr. Breitmann receive those scars in battle?”

“Oh, no.  It was a phase of his student life in Munich.  But he has been under fire.  He has had some hard luck.”  He wanted to add:  “Poor devil!”

She did not reply, but walked down the terrace steps to the path leading to the orchard.  The sturdy, warty old trees leaned toward the west, the single evidence of the years of punishment received at the hands of the winter sea tempests.  It was a real orchard, composed of several hundred trees, well kept, as evenly matched as might be, out of weedless ground.  From some hidden bough, a robin voiced his happiness, and yellowbirds flew hither and thither, and there was billing and cooing and nesting.  Along the low stone wall a wee chipmunk scampered.