did not, Mr. Gatewood."
"What did you write?"
"I wrote: 'He doesn't appear to know much about her age.'"
"But I do know—"
"You said—" They looked at one another earnestly.
"The next question," she continued with composure, "is: 'Date and place of birth?' Can you answer any part of that question?"
"I trust I may be able to—some day. … What are you writing?"
"I'm writing: 'He trusts he may be able to, some day.' Wasn't that what you said?"
"Yes, I did say that. I—I'm not perfectly sure what I meant by it."
She passed to the next question:
"Height?"
"About five feet six," he said, fascinated gaze on her.
"Hair?"
"More gold than brown—full of—er—gleams—" She looked up quickly; his eyes reverted to the window rather suddenly. He had been looking at her hair.
"Complexion?" she continued after a shade of hesitation.
"It's a sort of delicious mixture—bisque, tinted with a pinkish bloom—ivory and rose—" He was explaining volubly, when she began to shake her head, timing each shake to his words.
"Really, Mr. Gatewood, I think you are hopelessly vague on that point—unless you desire to convey the impression that she is speckled."
"Speckled!" he repeated, horrified. "Why, I am describing a woman who is my ideal of beauty—"
But she had already gone to the next question:
"Teeth?"
"P-p-perfect p-p-pearls!" he stammered. The laughing red mouth closed like a flower at dusk, veiling the sparkle of her teeth.
Was he trying to be impertinent? Was he deliberately describing her? He did not look like that sort of man; yet why was he watching her so closely, so curiously at every question? Why did he look at her teeth when she laughed?
"Eyes?" Her own dared him to continue what, coincidence or not, was plainly a description of herself.
"B-b-b—" He grew suddenly timorous, hesitating, pretending to a perplexity which was really a healthy scare. For she was frowning.
"Curious I can't think of the color of her eyes," he said; "is—isn't it?"
She coldly inspected her pad and made a correction; but all she did was to rub out a comma and put another in its place. Meanwhile, Gatewood, chin in his hand, sat buried in profound thought. "Were they blue?" he murmured to himself aloud, "or were they brown? Blue begins with a b and brown begins with a b. I'm convinced that her eyes began with a b. They were not, therefore, gray or green, because," he added in a burst of confidence, "it is utterly impossible to spell gray or green with a b!"
Miss Southerland looked slightly astonished.
"All you can recollect, then, is that the color of her eyes began with the letter b?"
"That is absolutely all I can remember; but I think they were—brown."
"If they were brown they must be brown now," she observed, looking out of the window.
"That's true! Isn't it curious I never thought of that? What are you writing?"
"Brown," she said, so briefly that it sounded something like a snub.
"Mouth?" inquired the girl, turning a new leaf on her pad.
"Perfect. Write it: there is no other term fit to describe its color, shape, its sensitive beauty, its—What did you write just then?"
"I wrote, 'Mouth, ordinary.'"
"I don't want you to! I want—"
"Really, Mr. Gatewood, a rhapsody on a girl's mouth is proper in poetry, but scarcely germane to the record of a purely business transaction. Please answer the next question tersely, if you don't mind: 'Figure?'"
"Oh, I do mind! I can't! Any poem is much too brief to describe her figure—"
"Shall we say 'Perfect'?" asked the girl, raising her brown eyes in a glimmering transition from vexation to amusement. For, after all, it could be only a coincidence that this young man should be describing features peculiar to herself.
"Couldn't you write, 'Venus-of-Milo-like'?" he inquired. "That is laconic."
"I could—if it's true. But if you mean it for praise—I—don't think any modern woman would be flattered."
"I always supposed that she of Milo had an ideal figure," he said, perplexed.
She wrote, "A good figure." Then, propping her rounded chin on one lovely white hand, she glanced at the next question:
"Hands?"
"White, beautiful, rose-tipped, slender yet softly and firmly rounded—"
"How can they be soft and firm, too, Mr. Gatewood?" she protested; then, surprising his guilty eyes fixed on her hands, hastily dropped them and sat up straight, level-browed, cold as marble. Was he deliberately being rude to her?
CHAPTER IV
As a matter of fact, he was not. Too poor in imagination to invent, on the spur of the moment, charms and qualities suited to his ideal, he had, at first unconsciously, taken as a model the girl before him; quite unconsciously and innocently at first—then furtively, and with a dawning perception of the almost flawless beauty he was secretly plagiarizing. Aware, now, that something had annoyed her; aware, too, at the same moment that there appeared to be nothing lacking in her to satisfy his imagination of the ideal, he began to turn redder than he had ever turned in all his life.
Several minutes of sixty seconds each ensued before he ventured to stir a finger. And it was only when she bent again very gravely over her pad that he cautiously eased a cramped muscle or two, and drew a breath—a long, noiseless, deep and timid respiration. He realized the enormity of what he had been doing—how close he had come to giving unpardonable offense by drawing a perfect portrait of her as the person he desired to find through the good offices of Keen & Co.
But there was no such person—unless she had a double: for what more could a man desire than the ideal traits he had been able to describe only by using her as his inspiration.
When he ventured to look at her, one glance was enough to convince him that she, too, had noticed the parallel—had been forced to recognize her own features in the portrait
