act answer eludes me."
He paused a moment, then went soberly on: "Your hair is a disputed
frontier, where brown and gold contend for dominion, and hers is
midnight black. Your eyes are violet and hers are dark, flecked, in
certain lights, with amber. Your colour is that of an old-fashioned rose
garden--and hers that of a poppy field."

"It must be only by contrast, then, that I make you think of her," mused
the girl. "We are absolute opposites."

"In detail, yes; in essentials, no," protested the man who was old
enough to compliment boldly and directly. "You share the quality of
goodness, but in itself that's as requisite to character and as
externally uninteresting as bones in a body. You share a rarer gift,
too. It's not so essential, but it crowns and enthrones its possessor
and is life's rarest gift: pure charm. Relative charm we find now and
again, but sheer, unalloyed charm is a flower that blooms only under the
blue moon of magic."

The pinkness of Anne's cheeks grew deeper.

"Where is she now, sir?"

"For many years she has been where magic is the common law: in
Paradise."

"Oh, forgive me. You spoke of her--"

"In the present tense," interrupted the soldier. "Yes, I always do. It
is so that I think of her." He broke off, then went on in a changed
voice, "But the gravity in eyes that laugh by divine right calls for
explanation."

For an instant a tiny line of trouble showed between her brows, and the
seriousness returned.

"I think perhaps, Mr. McCalloway, you are the one person I can tell."
She paused as though trying to marshal the sequences of a difficult
subject, then spoke impulsively:

"Boone doesn't realize it," she said slowly. "I don't want him to know,
because there's nothing he can do about it--yet. Since I made my
debut--and that was almost three years ago--I've been under a pressure
that's never relaxed. It hasn't been the sort of coercion one can
openly fight, but the harder, more insidious thing. It's in mother's
eyes--in everything--the unspoken accusation that I'm an ingrate: that
I'm selfishly thinking only of myself and not at all of my family."

"You mean in not marrying Morgan?"

The girl nodded. "And in refusing to give Boone up. When he was in
Louisville all the time, it was easier. I had his courage to lean
on--but since he went back to plan his race for the legislature, I've
felt very much alone and outnumbered. They are all so gently immovable.
It's terrible to feel tha