rated, 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."