“Nothing, thank you,” he answered.  “I’ll not have any tea.  I came in only for a moment to tell you that I’m going to be married.”

“Again?” she asked calmly, as though he had predicted a slight fall of snow.  But her calm did not communicate itself to him.

“Again?” he repeated hotly.  “What do you mean by ‘again?’”

“Now, Jimmie,” she remonstrated, as she settled herself more comfortably among her pillows and centered all her apparent attention upon a fragile cup and a small but troublesome sandwich, “don’t be savage.  I only mean that you always tell me so when you find an opportunity.  That you even manufacture opportunities—­some of them out of most unlikely material.  A chance meeting in a cross-town car; an especially forte place in an opera; the moment when a bishop is saying grace or a host telling his favorite story.  And yet you expect me to be surprised to hear it now!  Here in my own deserted drawing-room with the fire lighted and the lamps turned low.  You forget that one is allowed to remember.”

“You allow yourself to forget when you choose and to remember when you wish:  You are—­”

“And to whom are you going to be married?  To the same girl?  Do you know, I think she is not worthy of you?”

“She is not,” he acquiesced, and she, for a passing moment, seemed disconcerted.  “Yet she is,” he continued, cheered by this slight triumph, “the most persistent, industrious and deserving of all the young persons who, attracted by my great position and vast wealth, are pressing themselves or being pressed by designing relatives upon my notice.”

His hostess laughed softly.

“Make allowances for them,” she pleaded.  “You know very few men can rival your advantages.  The sixth son of a retired yet respectable stock broker, and an income of four thousand a year derived from a small but increasing—­shall we say increasing—?”

“Diminishing; incredible as it may seem, diminishing.”

“From a small but diminishing law practice.  And with these you must mention your greatest charm.”

“Which is?”

“Your humility, your modesty, your lack of self-assertiveness.  Do you think she recognizes that?  It is so difficult to fully appreciate your humility.”

Jimmie grinned.  “She’s up to it,” said he.  “She knows all about it.  She’s as clever, as keen, as clear-sighted.”

“Is she, perhaps, pleasing to the eye?” asked Miss Knowles idly.  “Clever women are often so—­well, so—­”

Jimmie gazed at her across the little tea-table.  He filled his eyes with her.  And, since his heart was in his eyes, he filled that, too.  After a moment he made solemn answer: 

“She is the most beautiful woman God ever made.”

“Ah, now,” said Miss Knowles, returning her cup to its fellows and turning her face, and her mind, more entirely to him, “now we grow interesting.  Describe her to me.”