"Did you notice how perfect this heliotrope is?" she asked, looking down, not at him, but at the blossoms on the lapel of her jacket.
"It is pretty," he answered, wondering how soon his evil star would lure him on to say the wrong thing.
His apparently indifferent manner piqued her still further. "If you feel very good, and are sure you are going to be good all day, I will give you a piece," she said, separating one spray from its fellows.
Van Tassel sprang to his feet, and in a second Mildred’s fingers were upon his coat.
"The round world is just a rattle to her, and you are one of the bells on it that jingle when she moves you."
Clover’s words were sounding warningly in his ears. He could not help it. He only prayed to jingle in tune, for moved he was to the depths of his being.
"You like heliotrope very much?" he asked, not daring to look below her cool, fair forehead.
"Yes. Sometimes, I think, best of all; but," with a sigh, "it goes quickly." And she dropped her hands and moved back.
"Like all the happiest moments of life," said Jack, and something leaped from his brown eyes that actually surprised Mildred, coming out of the long train of indifferent days.
"Oh, if Jack is like that," she thought, and a new respect grew in her for the man who ruled himself, and refused to submit to her caprice.
"It is a clear day, Mildred. Let us go up in the Wheel," he said. "Have you made the trip yet?"
"No, but I have a new idea about it. I’m sure it will make me dizzy. It did Clover; and I think I shall be afraid, too."
"Don’t give up going. I’m sure you will not be afraid. It is an absolutely steady, safe motion, and the changing view is unique."
"No, indeed; I wouldn’t give up going, only I think I would rather go alone. I don’t want any one to behold my weakness."
"Oh, very well." Van Tassel made a gesture of indifferent assent, sat down, and returned to his paper. The little incident of the heliotrope had done more to convince him of Clover’s wisdom than all her sage words. Its perfume stole up to him as he sat reading the same line over twelve times.
Mildred moved away, outwardly calm, inwardly vexed with Jack for his ready acquiescence.
She went into the house and met Clover. "Going to the Fair?" asked the latter.