He was well accustomed to being appropriated by elder ladies, with the evident understanding that he preferred them.

He would simply have to make the best of it and show his collection as gracefully as possible and leave out the rose-garden and the delicious little tete-a-tete with this young rose of a girl and think of something else.

For Karl von Rosen in these days was accustoming himself to a strange visage in his own mental looking-glass.

He had not altered his attitude toward women but toward one woman, and that one was now sauntering beside him in the summer moonlight, her fluffy white garments now and then blowing across his sober garb.

He was conscious of holding himself in a very tight rein.