s benefactions; but the same
vicious impulse made him study the face of Sally Fortune with an
impersonal, coldly critical eye. It was not easy to do, for she sat with
her head tilted back a little, as though to take the warmth of the fire
more fully. The faint smile on her lips showed her comfort, mingled with
retrospection.

Here he lost the trend of his thoughts by beginning to wonder of what
she could be thinking, but he called himself back sharply to the
analysis of her features. It was a game with which he had often amused
himself among the girls of his eastern acquaintance. Their beauty, after
all, was their only weapon, and when he discovered that that weapon was
not of pure steel, they became nothing; it was like pushing them away
with an arm of infinite length.

There was food for criticism in Sally's features. The nose, of course,
was tipped up a bit, and the mouth too large, but Anthony discovered
that it was almost impossible to centre his criticism on either feature.
The tip-tilt of the nose suggested a quaint and infinitely buoyant
spirit; the mouth, if generously wide, was exquisitely made. She was
certainly not pretty, but he began to feel with equal certainty that she
was beautiful.

A waiting mood came on him while he watched, as one waits through a
great symphony and endures the monotonous passages for the sake of the
singing bursts of harmony to which the commoner parts are a necessary
background. He began to wish that she would turn her head so that he
could see her eyes. They were like the inspired part of that same
symphony, a beauty which could not be remembered and was always new,
satisfying. He could make her turn by speaking, and knowing that this
was so, he postponed the pleasure like a miser who will only count his
gold once a day.

From the side view he dwelt on the short, delicately carved upper lip
and the astonishingly pleasant curve of the cheek.

"Look at me," he said abruptly.

She turned, observed him calmly, and then glanced back to the fire. She
asked no question.

Her chin rested on her hands, now, so that when she spoke her head
nodded a little and gave a significance to what she said.

"The grey doesn't belong to you?"

So she was thinking of horses!

"Well," she repeated.

"No."

"Hoss-lifting," she mused.

"Why shouldn't I take a horse when they had shot down mine?"

She turned to him again, and this time her gaze went over him slowly,
curiously, but withou