come over here and sit down in this chair where I can look at
you! I want to talk to you! I--"

Pirouetting once more before the mirror, she divided one fleet glance
between admiration for herself and scorn for Stanton.

"Oh, yes, I felt perfectly sure that you'd insist upon having me
'pretty'!" she announced sternly. Then courtesying low to the ground
in mock humility, she began to sing-song mischievously:

"So Molly, Molly made-her-a-face,
Made it of rouge and made it of lace.
Long as the rouge and the lace are fair,
Oh, Mr. Man, what do you care?"

"You don't need any rouge or lace to make _you_ pretty!" Stanton
fairly shouted in his vehemence. "Anybody might have known that that
lovely, little mind of yours could only live in a--"

"Nonsense!" the girl interrupted, almost temperishly. Then with a
quick, impatient sort of gesture she turned to the table, and picking
up book after book, opened it and stared in it as though it had been a
mirror. "Oh, maybe my mind is pretty enough," she acknowledged
reluctantly. "But likelier than not, my face is not becoming--to me."

Crossing slowly over to Stanton's side she seated herself, with much
jingling, rainbow-colored, sandalwood-scented dignity, in the chair
that the Doctor had just vacated.

"Poor dear, you've been pretty sick, haven't you?" she mused gently.
Cautiously then she reached out and touched the soft, woolly cuff of
his blanket-wrapper. "Did you really like it?" she asked.

Stanton began to smile again. "Did I really like it?" he repeated
joyously. "Why, don't you know that if it hadn't been for you I should
have gone utterly mad these past few weeks? Don't you know that if it
hadn't been for you--don't you know that if--" A little over-zealously
he clutched at the tinsel fringe on the oriental lady's fan. "Don't
you know--don't you know that I'm--engaged to be married?" he finished
weakly.

The oriental lady shivered suddenly, as any lady might shiver on a
November night in thin silken clothes. "Engaged to be married?" she
stammered. "Oh, yes! Why--of course! Most men are! Really unless you
catch a man very young and keep him absolutely constantly by your
side you cannot hope to walk even into his friendship--except across
the heart of some other woman." Again she shivered and jingled a
hundred merry little bangles. "But why?" she asked abruptly, "why, if
you're engaged to be married, did you come and--buy love-letters of
me? My lov