g Carl Bristoll's brain as he
bowed. Then he realized the delicate white-and-pink glow of her
complexion and a marvelous pair of mismated eyes.

Later when trying to defend to his own sophisticated mind his
unaccountable loss of poise, he assured himself that it was these eyes.
They should have spoiled her beauty, just as any other thing that
destroyed symmetry of balance in form or color would have marred the
effect. Yet, on the contrary, they were gorgeous and wonderful, and when
he looked at them he felt as if he had plunged into some icy pool and
come out glowing.

"It is a pleasure indeed, Mr. Bristoll," she smiled when he had been
presented. "You see we must be good and informal friends since the--"
she shrugged her slim shoulders and quite unconsciously fell into French
idiom as she continued--"since the so great impatience of my big brother
compels me to meet you like this--all untidy and unprepared." She made a
little gesture with both hands and her rippling laugh seemed to envelop
the young secretary with a deep sense of obligation for her
graciousness. "I have been so long from America, and I have not yet come
back to the American ways. In France they do not so rush from their beds
to their business. In France they take the time to live."

In Hamilton Burton's face there remained no echo of the impatience of a
few minutes past. In his serene eyes was no hint of remembered
annoyance. As he drew back his sister's chair, one saw in his masterful
face only the satisfied pride of a man fastidious of taste in all things
from neck-scarfs to women.

"I'm truly sorry, Mary," he declared, "to have inconvenienced you, but
you must let me be a little selfish. The only time I can be sure of
seeing you will be across the breakfast-table, and that privilege you
must grant--because you are too delectable a sister to do without."

"Ah," she laughed, "but I did not know that here in America the men knew
how to say the pretty things--and to their own sisters, too! But it is
for me to apologize. It is I who let the coffee grow cold. I have been
spoiled abroad where people are very lazy." Under her smiling eyes the
two men sat content while she made of serving the Bolivian coffee a
ceremonial as pretty as a fete.

Young Bristoll, usually loquacious enough, was not talkative this
morning. What had happened to more hardened philanderers abroad was
happening to him, and the shield which he had always succeeded in
holding safe