He seated himself, opened a paper bag, and deliberately cracked and ate a nut.
"Horrors! and disillusion! The idol of the public--munching peanuts!"
She stood it for a while; but the saving grace of humour warned her of her peril, and she ate a peanut.
"To save my face," she explained. "But I didn't suppose you were capable of it."
"As a matter of fact," he said, tranquilly, "a man can do anything in this world if he only does it thoroughly and appears to enjoy himself. I've seen the Prince Regent of Boznovia sitting at the window of the Crown Regiment barracks arrayed in his shirt-sleeves and absorbing beer and pretzels."
"According to that philosophy you are at liberty to eat fish with your knife."
"That is neither philosophy nor logic," he insisted; "that is speculation. May I offer you a stick of old-fashioned circus candy flavored with wintergreen?"
"You may," she said, accepting it. "If there is any lower depth I may attain, I'm sure you will suggest it."
"I'll try," he said. Their eyes met for an instant; then hers were lowered.
Squirrels came in troops; she fed the little, fat scamps to repletion, and the green lawn was dotted with squirrels all busily burying peanuts for future consumption. A brilliant peacock appeared, picking his way towards them, followed by a covey of imbecile peafowl. She fed them until their crops protruded.
The sun glittered on the upper windows of the clubs and hotels along Fifth Avenue; the west turned gold, then pink. Clouds of tiny moths came hovering among the wistaria blossoms; and high in the sky the metallic note of a nighthawk rang, repeating in querulous cadence the cries of water-fowl on the lake, where mallard and widgeon were restlessly preparing for an evening flight.
"You know," she said, gravely, "a woman who over-steps convention always suffers; a man, never. I have done something I never expected to do--never supposed was in me to do. And now that I have gone so far, it is perhaps better for me to go farther." She looked at him steadily. "Your studio is a perfect sounding-board. You have an astonishingly frank habit of talking to yourself; and every word is perfectly audible to me when my window is raised. When you chose to apostrophize me as a 'white-faced, dark-eyed little thing,' and when you remarked to yourself that there were 'thousands like me in New York,' I was perfectly indignant."