nd Fanny were alone.

"How is the lady?" Fanny negligently inquired.

Her arms and neck were bare. Her dress, immaterial as cobwebs, was of
starbeams' restful hue. About her throat was a string of opals. They
were colorful, though less so than her eyes and mouth.

She was seated on a sofa. Loftus was standing. As always, he was
superiorly sent out. Other men who got their things at the same places
that he got his never succeeded, however they tried, in appearing
half so well.

"Do you know," Fanny continued, "she has improved vastly since that
day when I saw you trying to pick her up. How did you ever manage?
Tell me."

Loftus, his hands in his pockets, shrugged a shoulder.

"And she is so delightfully disdainful," Fanny ran on. "In Central
Park this afternoon she turned up her nose at me. It is a very pretty
nose, Royal, did you know that?"

"I know that it is a bit out of joint," Loftus condescended at last to
reply.

"Dear me! Fancy that! But then the course of true love never did run
smooth."

Loftus assumed an air of great weariness. "Do drop it," he said. "You
know very well that I have never cared for anyone but you."

"Oh, of course," Fanny promptly and pleasantly retorted. "I may have
had a doubt or two about it. But when you put this lady in a flat
around the corner, then, naturally, you convinced me. It was a rather
circuitous way, though, to go at it, don't you think?"

Beside her on the sofa Loftus flopped. "Why do you always go back to
that?" he asked, with the same affectation of weariness.

Fanny turned from him. "I don't seem to be able to get away from it,"
she answered, but less promptly and pleasantly than before. Her fair
face had grown serious. From her eyes the bantering look had gone.
"Besides," she added after a moment, "you took her to Europe, and that
did seem a trifle steep."

"Would you like her to go back there?" Loftus tentatively inquired.

In and out from Fanny's skirt a white slipper, butterflied with gold,
moved restlessly. "I should have preferred that you had let her alone.
It was not nice of you. It was not nice at all."

From him she had turned to the carpet. She was looking at it still. "I
wonder," she presently resumed, "if you ever suspected how it hurt
me." Pausing a bit she looked up. "But you have been so dense, Royal."

Loftus was about to interrupt. She checked him. "The first time I saw
you I was just fifteen. That is eight years ago. Since then I can