The girl standing there in the door was a sight to make men gasp and lose their tongues, and because this was not the first who had done so, her own perfect lips curved into a smile of purest graciousness, and in her voice as she spoke was a quality of zylophone music made the more charming by that slight French accent which years abroad had given her.  Beauty is so variant of type, so often vaunted and so rarely found in true perfectness, that Carl Bristoll had accepted the newspaper reports of this girl’s loveliness with a discounted credence.  Now he was convinced.  The quality of her coloring and expression would have made her face beautiful even had it lacked its allurement of line and delicacy of proportion; even had the chin tilted less regally and the eyes looked out under their long lashes with less serene queenliness, though ready to twinkle at the instant into the merriment of a mischief-loving child.

She was tall, but not too tall, lithe and slim and sinuous as a mermaid, yet well enough rounded to make each delicate curve a charm, not merely of promise but of fulfilment.  She wore a flowing morning-gown that made negligee seem to the suddenly intoxicated secretary the glorified costume for a woman.  It was a richly embroidered thing from China and on her head was a crown of lace.  Bristoll knew that its material name would be a boudoir cap, but on her head it became a crown—­no, it was too filmy and ethereal for that:  rather it was a sort of halo.  Beneath it, and imprisoning pale fire in its amber softness, escaped a truant mass of curls.  From the cap to the foamy whiteness of a lacy petticoat that peeped out just above the silk-clad ankles, she was exquisite.  And all these things stamped themselves on young Carl Bristoll’s brain as he bowed.  Then he realized the delicate white-and-pink glow of her complexion and a marvelous pair of mismated eyes.

Later when trying to defend to his own sophisticated mind his unaccountable loss of poise, he assured himself that it was these eyes.  They should have spoiled her beauty, just as any other thing that destroyed symmetry of balance in form or color would have marred the effect.  Yet, on the contrary, they were gorgeous and wonderful, and when he looked at them he felt as if he had plunged into some icy pool and come out glowing.

“It is a pleasure indeed, Mr. Bristoll,” she smiled when he had been presented.  “You see we must be good and informal friends since the—­” she shrugged her slim shoulders and quite unconsciously fell into French idiom as she continued—­“since the so great impatience of my big brother compels me to meet you like this—­all untidy and unprepared.”  She made a little gesture with both hands and her rippling laugh seemed to envelop the young secretary with a deep sense of obligation for her graciousness.  “I have been so long from America, and I have not yet come back to the American ways.  In France they do not so rush from their beds to their business.  In France they take the time to live.”