“I mean she must have what I call beauty,” he added by way of explanation.  “I don’t count mere red and white beauty.  Phrony Tripper has that.”  This was not without intention.  Alice had spoken of Phrony’s beauty one day when she saw her at the school.

“But she is very pretty,” asserted the girl, “so fresh and such color!”

“Oh, pretty! yes; and color—­a wine-sap apple has color.  But I am speaking of real beauty, the beauty of the rose, the freshness that you cannot define, that holds fragrance, a something that you love, that you feel even more than you see.”

She thought of a school friend of hers, Louise Caldwell, a tall, statuesque beauty, with whom another friend, Norman Wentworth, was in love, and she wondered if Keith would think her such a beauty as he described.

“She must be sweet,” he went on, thinking to himself for her benefit.  “I cannot define that either, but you know what I mean?”

She decided mentally that Louise Caldwell would not fill his measure.

“It is something that only some girls have in common with some flowers—­violets, for instance.”

“Oh, I don’t care for sweet girls very much,” she said, thinking of another schoolmate whom the girls used to call eau sucre.

“You do,” he said positively.  “I am not talking of that kind.  It is womanliness and gentleness, fragrance, warmth, beauty, everything.”

“Oh, yes.  That kind?” she said acquiescingly.  “Well, go on; you expect to find a good deal.”

“I do,” he said briefly, and sat up.  “I expect to find the best.”

She glanced at him with new interest.  He was very good-looking when he was spirited.  And his eyes now were full of light.

“Well, beauty and sweetness,” she said; “what else?  I must know, for I may have to help you find her.  There don’t appear to be many around Ridgely, since you have declined to accept the only pretty girl I have seen.”

“She must be good and true.  She must know the truth as—­” His eye fell at that instant on a humming-bird, a gleaming jewel of changing sapphire that, poised on half-invisible wings, floated in a bar of sunlight before a sprig of pink honeysuckle. “—­As that bird knows the flowers where the honey lies.”

“Where do you expect to find this paragon?”

As if in answer, the humming-bird suddenly caught sight of the red rose in her dress, and, darting to it, thrust its bill deep into the crimson heart of the flower.  They both gave an exclamation of delighted wonder.

“I have found her,” he said firmly, leaning a little toward her, with mantling cheeks and close-drawn lips, his glowing eyes on her face.  “The bird has found her for me.”

The bird darted away.

“Ah, it is gone!  What will you give her in return?” She turned to him, and spoke half mockingly, wishing to get off such delicate ground.

He turned and gazed into her eyes.