not admirably
finished. And then her mouth! It 's as if a pair of lips had been shaped
to utter pure truth without doing it dishonor!" Later, after he had been
working for a week, he declared if Miss Light were inordinately plain,
she would still be the most fascinating of women. "I 've quite forgotten
her beauty," he said, "or rather I have ceased to perceive it as
something distinct and defined, something independent of the rest of
her. She is all one, and all consummately interesting!"

"What does she do--what does she say, that is so remarkable?" Rowland
had asked.

"Say? Sometimes nothing--sometimes everything. She is never the same.
Sometimes she walks in and takes her place without a word, without a
smile, gravely, stiffly, as if it were an awful bore. She hardly looks
at me, and she walks away without even glancing at my work. On other
days she laughs and chatters and asks endless questions, and pours out
the most irresistible nonsense. She is a creature of moods; you can't
count upon her; she keeps observation on the stretch. And then, bless
you, she has seen such a lot! Her talk is full of the oddest allusions!"

"It is altogether a very singular type of young lady," said Rowland,
after the visit which I have related at length. "It may be a charm, but
it is certainly not the orthodox charm of marriageable maidenhood, the
charm of shrinking innocence and soft docility. Our American girls
are accused of being more knowing than any others, and Miss Light is
nominally an American. But it has taken twenty years of Europe to make
her what she is. The first time we saw her, I remember you called her a
product of the old world, and certainly you were not far wrong."

"Ah, she has an atmosphere," said Roderick, in the tone of high
appreciation.

"Young unmarried women," Rowland answered, "should be careful not to
have too much!"

"Ah, you don't forgive her," cried his companion, "for hitting you so
hard! A man ought to be flattered at such a girl as that taking so much
notice of him."

"A man is never flattered at a woman's not liking him."

"Are you sure she does n't like you? That 's to the credit of your
humility. A fellow of more vanity might, on the evidence, persuade
himself that he was in favor."

"He would have also," said Rowland, laughing, "to be a fellow of
remarkable ingenuity!" He asked himself privately how the deuce Roderick
reconciled it to his conscience to think so much more of the girl he