“Again?” Jimmie plagiarized.

“Yes, again.  Tell me, what is she like?”

“She is like,” he began so deliberately that his hostess, leaning forward, hung upon his words, “she is exactly like—­nothing.”  The hostess sat back.  “There was never anything in the least like her.  To begin with, she is fair and young and slim.  She is tall enough, and small enough and her eyes are gray and black and blue.”

“She sounds disreputable, your paragon.”

“And her eyes,” he insisted, “are gray in the sunlight, blue in the lamplight, and black by the light of the moon.”

“And in the firelight?”

He rose to kick the logs into a greater brightness; and when he had studied her glowing face until it glowed even more brightly, he answered: 

“In the firelight they are—­wonderful.  She has—­did I tell you?—­the whitest and smallest of teeth.”

“They’re so much worn this year,” she laughed, and wondered the while what evil instinct tempted her to play this dangerous game; why she could not refrain from peering into the deeper places of his nature to see if her image were still there and still supreme?  Why should she, almost involuntarily, work to create and foster an emotion upon which she set no store, which indeed, only amused her in its milder manifestations and frightened her when it grew intense?  He showed symptoms of unwelcome seriousness now, but she would have none of it.

“Go on,” she urged.  “Unless you give her a few more features she will be like little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother.”

“And she has,” he proceeded obediently, “eyebrows and eyelashes—­”

“One might have guessed them.”

“—­beyond the common, long and dark and soft.  The rest of her face is the only possible setting for her eyes.  It is perfection.”

“And is she gentle, womanly, tender?  Is she, I so often wonder, good enough to you?”

“She treats me hundreds of times better than I deserve.”

“Doesn’t she rather swindle you?  Doesn’t she let you squander your time?”—­she glanced at the clock—­“your substance?”—­she bent to lay her cheek against the violets at her breast—­“your affection upon her—?”

“And how could she be kinder?  And when I marry her—­”

“And if,” Miss Knowles amended.

“There’s no question about it,” he retorted.  “She knows that I shall marry her.”  Miss Knowles looked unconvinced.  “She knows that she will marry me.”  Miss Knowles looked rebellious.  “She knows that I shall never marry anyone else.”  Miss Knowles took that apparently for granted.

“Dear boy!” said she.

“That I have waited seven years for her.”

“Poor boy!” said she.

“That I shall wait seven more for her.”

“Silly boy!” said she.

“And so I stopped this afternoon to tell her that I’m coming home to marry her in two or three months.”