of blue. He was thinking vaguely how
much bluer than the sky were her eyes.

"Yes?" Her tone was tender.

"She must be a beauty, of course." He gazed at her with that in his eyes
which said, as plainly as words could have said it, "You are
beautiful."

But she was looking away, wondering to herself who it might be.

"I mean she must have what _I_ call beauty," he added by way of
explanation. "I don't count mere red and white beauty. Phrony Tripper
has that." This was not without intention. Alice had spoken of Phrony's
beauty one day when she saw her at the school.

"But she is very pretty," asserted the girl, "so fresh and such color!"

"Oh, pretty! yes; and color--a wine-sap apple has color. But I am
speaking of real beauty, the beauty of the rose, the freshness that you
cannot define, that holds fragrance, a something that you love, that you
feel even more than you see."

She thought of a school friend of hers, Louise Caldwell, a tall,
statuesque beauty, with whom another friend, Norman Wentworth, was in
love, and she wondered if Keith would think her such a beauty as he
described.

"She must be sweet," he went on, thinking to himself for her benefit. "I
cannot define that either, but you know what I mean?"

She decided mentally that Louise Caldwell would not fill his measure.

"It is something that only some girls have in common with some
flowers--violets, for instance."

"Oh, I don't care for sweet girls very much," she said, thinking of
another schoolmate whom the girls used to call _eau sucre_.

"You do," he said positively. "I am not talking of that kind. It is
womanliness and gentleness, fragrance, warmth, beauty, everything."

"Oh, yes. That kind?" she said acquiescingly. "Well, go on; you expect
to find a good deal."

"I do," he said briefly, and sat up. "I expect to find the best."

She glanced at him with new interest. He was very good-looking when he
was spirited. And his eyes now were full of light.

"Well, beauty and sweetness," she said; "what else? I must know, for I
may have to help you find her. There don't appear to be many around
Ridgely, since you have declined to accept the only pretty girl I
have seen."

"She must be good and true. She must know the truth as--" His eye fell
at that instant on a humming-bird, a gleaming jewel of changing sapphire
that, poised on half-invisible wings, floated in a bar of sunlight
before a sprig of pink honeysuckle. "--As that bird knows the fl