le faces from the highest of the
old mountains into the rarest of skies, growths seeming to partake of
some celestial perfection; hardy, though they clothed themselves in an
outward seeming of fragile delicacy. _Physically_--he emphasized the
word and barricaded himself behind it as though he were on the defence
against her!--she came nearer perfection than he had thought a girl
could come, and nowhere did he find a conflicting detail from the
tendril of sunny brown hair touching the curve of the sweet young face
to the little feet in their clicking high-heeled shoes. Thus from the
beginning he thought of her in superlatives. And thus did Gloria, like
the springtime coquetting with an aloof and silent wilderness, make her
bright entry into Mark King's life.

"I have been acting-up like a Comanche Indian outside," laughed Gloria.
It was she who withdrew her hands; King started inwardly, wondering how
long he had been holding them, how long he would have held them if she
had not been so serenely mistress of the moment. "My hair was all
tumbling down and I had to run upstairs to fight it back where it
belongs. Isn't a girl's hair a terrible affliction, Mr. King? One of
these days, when papa's back is turned, I'm going to cut it off short,
like a boy's."

An explanation of her presence in the house while her guests were still
in the yard; why explain so trifling a matter? A suggestion that she
retained that lustrous crown of hair just to please her papa, whereas
one who had not been told might have been mistaken in his belief that
this should be one of her greatest prides. Two little fibs for Miss
Gloria; yet, certainly, very small fibs which hurt no one.

Gloria's eyes, despite their soft tenderness, were every whit as quick
as Mark King's when they were, as now, intrigued. Of course both she and
King had heard countless references, one of the other, from Ben Gaynor,
but neither had been greatly interested. King had known that there was a
baby girl, long ago; that fact had been impressed on him with such rare
eloquence that it had created a mental picture which, until now, had
been vivid and like an indelible drawing; he had known, had he ever
paused for reflection, which he had not, that a baby would not stay such
during a period of eighteen years. She had heard a thousand tales of "my
good friend, Mark." Mark, thus, had been in her mind a man of her
father's age, and about such a young girl's romantic ideas do not floc