“What became of all those flowers that were in your garden last summer?” he asked, suddenly.  “Do you dig up the roots, or cover them, or let them freeze?  You have no idea how many times these cold days the recollection of that hour with you last summer when we walked among them recurs to me.  It seems ages ago, however.  That was one of the happy days, Louise.”

A delicate tint of pink stole into her face.  For to her also the day had been one of happiness, as clear-cut in her memory as a cameo.  The thought that it and she had been dwelling in his mind produced in her breast an unaccountable agitation.  The coral pink in her cheeks deepened to a flush; she lowered her eye-lashes and averted her look.

“The flowers are banked with straw, the perennials,” she said, to prevent a silence.

“I shall come and see them when they’re blooming again,” he stated.  “The more I recall them, the more beautiful it seems they were—­yes, and the orchard, too, and the grassy canals, and the sunshine that day.  And you in the picture—­the centre of the picture, Louise.  The impressions one retains that stand out vividly in the mind are few:  that is one of the number for me.  But perhaps not for you.”

“Oh, for me also,” she exclaimed.

Bryant stared at her round forearms and hands lying on her lap, but without observing them.  He had marked the quick sincerity of her response.  It affected him as would her soft hand-clasp.  He began to glance restlessly about the room.

The dusk of the early winter night was at hand.  It had thickened in the corners and over where Mr. Graham and Dave were meditating their game in silence.  The flames crackling in the fireplace intensified the forming shadows.  Lee recognized that it was time to be going.  Nevertheless, he continued to linger for a while, with his eyes sometimes resting on his companion in enjoyment of her face, engaged in thought, experiencing a contentment in merely being in her presence.

“This will be another of those days,” he at length remarked, in a musing tone.

His words aroused her from her own reflections.

“One for winter as well as for summer,” she said, raising her look.  “Did I seem to be dreaming when you spoke?  I was doing scarcely that; my mind was lulled; the quiet—­the twilight—­Christmas Day—­they bring a soothing mood.”

“Something that in a world of money, money can’t buy,” Lee said.  He appeared about to make a further remark, but failed to do so.  His thoughts, however, had gone off somewhere, Louise observed.  Then he inquired in a matter-of-fact way:  “When will you ride up to camp again?”

“Not until it grows warmer.  Twelve miles or more is rather too far for a canter on a sharp day.”

He cast his eyes about at the strings of evergreen and the suspended red bells and holly wreaths.

“I’ll run down again, if I may, before the holidays are over,” said he.  “If only for another look at those things.  They give a fellow a pull—­out of the ditch, so to speak.”  And he rose.