--?"

She gave him a startled glance. "The pearls?"

"I want to see you without them."

She unwound them and they dripped from her hand in milky whiteness.

He made his survey. "That's better," he said, "if they were real it
would be different--I don't like to have you cheapened by anything less
than--perfect----"

"Cheapened?" She smiled inscrutably, then dropped the pearls into a
small box on the table beside her. "Yes," she said, "if they were real
it would be different----"

There was something in her manner which made him say hurriedly, "You
must not think that I am criticizing your taste. If I had my way you
should have everything that money can buy----"

Her candid eyes came up to his. "There are a great many things that
money cannot buy."

"You've got to show me," George told her; "I've never seen anything yet
that I couldn't get with money."

"Could you buy--dreams----"

"I'd rather buy--diamonds."

"And money can't buy happiness."

"It can buy a pretty good imitation."

"But imitation happiness is like imitation pearls."

He laughed and sat down beside her. "You mustn't be too clever."

"I am not clever at all."

"I believe you are. And you don't have to be. There are plenty of
clever women but only one Becky Bannister."

It was just an hour later that Georgie-Porgie kissed her. She was at
the piano in the music-room, and there was no light except the glimmer
of tall white candles, and the silver moonlight which fell across the
shining floor.

Her grandfather was nodding in the room beyond, and through the open
window came the dry, sweet scent of summer, as if nature had opened her
pot-pourri to give the world a whiff of treasured fragrance.

Becky had been singing, and she had stopped and looked up at him.

"Oh, you lovely--lovely, little thing," he said, and bent his head.

To Becky, that moment was supreme, sacred. She trembled with
happiness. To her that kiss meant betrothal--ultimate marriage.

To George it meant, of course, nothing of the kind. It was only one of
many moments. It was a romance which might have been borrowed from the
Middle Ages. A rare tale such as one might read in a book. A pleasant
dalliance--to be continued until he was tired of it. If he ever
married, it must be a spectacular affair--handsome woman, big fortune,
not an unsophisticated slip of a child from an impoverished Virginia
farm.

III

In the days that followed, Becky's gay lo