aving eyes that didn't match was
pretty," she argued.

"Some day, if you happen to live where men make fine phrases, which
after all may not be such a blessing," he assured her, "they will
whisper to you that you are a miraculous color-scheme. It's a bit hard
to express, but I can give you examples--" He broke off suddenly and
laughed at himself. "After all," he began again in a different voice,
"what's the use? I forgot that the things I should compare you with are
all things you haven't seen. They would mean nothing."

"Tell me, anyhow," she commanded.

"Very well. There is a style of architecture in the Orient: The Temple
of Omar at Jerusalem has it. The Taj Mahal has it. Interiors crusted
with the color of gems and mosaics and rich inlay; the Italian
renaissance has it; splashed from a palette that knew no stint--no
economy. It's a brilliant, triumphant sort of paean in which the notes
are all notes of color. You have it, too--and now I'm going to drive on.
But don't forget that it's easier to be kind when people call you
spindle-legs than it will be when they come with offerings of flattery."

"You must have seen a lot of things." Mary Burton's voice was that of
admiring wonder, and the young man's face became grave, almost pained
for an instant.

"In a way," he answered, "I have. But I may not see much more. Most men
look back on life when they are old and wise, but I am doing it while
still young and perhaps the backward glance is the same in age or youth.
It's a summary."

"I don't understand half of what you are saying," she confessed a little
regretfully. It seemed to her from what she did grasp that the rest
would be well worth while.

"If it were otherwise," he laughed with a return of the whimsical glint
to his pupils and the little wrinkles about the corners of his eyes, "I
should not have said half of it. A good part of my conversation has been
in the manner of soliloquy. Hermits often talk to themselves. I shall
now say something else you won't understand. Wield leniently the
dangerous gift of your witchcraft--the freakish beauty of your perfect
unmatched eyes."

And all the way home Mary Burton walked on air, and the lonely woods
seemed to have grown of a sudden spicy and glorious. When she stole up
to the room under the eaves and looked again into the little mirror, she
did not turn away so unhappy as she had been. The brown eye dared to
meet the brown eye in the glass--and the violet eye, th