He smiled at me drowsily.  “The arbutus,” he explained, with a lingering touch of his finger upon the blossoms.  “Smell them, monsieur.  I found them in Connecticut last spring.  Are they not well suited to be the first flowers of this wild land?  Repellent without,—­see how rough the leaves are to your finger,—­but fragrant and beautiful under its harsh coating.  Life in the Colonies grew to seem to me much the same.”

I turned the flowers over, and considered his philosophy.  “You are less cynical than your wont, monsieur.”  I reflected.  “May I say that I like it better in you?  Cynicism is a court exotic.  It should not grow under these pines.”

He put out his hand to brush a twig from my doublet.  “Cynicism is often the flower of bitterness.  Monsieur, you have been very good to me.  I cannot keep in mind my constant bitterness against life when I think of the thoughtfulness and justice you have shown me.”

I jerked away.  “Sufficient!  Sufficient!  Let us be comfortable,” I expostulated, and I turned my back, and gave myself to my pipe and silence.

The birds sang softly as if wearied, and the earth was warm to the hand.  I held the flowers in my fingers, and they smelled, somehow, like the roses on our terrace at home on moonlight evenings when I had been young and thought myself in love.  I watched a drift of white butterflies hang over an opening red blossom.  Such moments pay for hours of famine.  It disturbed me to have the Englishman rise and go away.

“Why do you go?” I demanded.

He came back at once.  “What can I do for you, monsieur?”

His gentleness shamed my shortness of speech.  “It was nothing,” I replied.  “The truth is, it was pleasant to have you here beside me.”  I laughed at my own folly.  “Starling, I will put you in man’s dress to-morrow!” I cried.

He turned away.  “As you like, monsieur.  I think myself it would be best.  Will you get out the clothes to-night?”

But I stared at him.  “Why blush about it, Starling?” I shrugged.  I felt some disdain of his sensitiveness.  “I did not mean to twit you.  I understand that you have worn the squaw’s dress to help us.  But I think that the necessity for disguise is past.  I see the skirts embarrass you.”

He turned to look at me fairly.  “I am not blushing, monsieur,” he explained, with a great air of candor.  “It is the heat of the afternoon;” but even as he spoke the red flowed from chin to forehead, and when I looked at him with another laugh, his eyes fell before mine.

I rose on my elbow.  “Starling!  Starling!” I cried.  He made no sound.  His head drooped, and I saw him clench his hand.  I stared.  He threw his head back, but when he tried to meet my look he failed.  Yet I looked again.  “My God!” I heard my voice say, and my teeth bit into my lip.  I could smell the flowers in my hand, but they seemed a long distance away.  “My God!” I cried again, and I rose and felt my way into the woods with the step of a blind man.