lsiveness.

She smiled archly. "See here, Dicky, I thought we were going to tell
each other the story of our lives. Your turn now; tell me how she looks
to you, this girl that came at last--there's always the one girl comes
at last, they say, if you wait long enough. Go on--tell me--what's she
like?"

"Of course, you don't know!" I said significantly.

"Me? Of course I wouldn't know--I want you to tell me. Say, is she
really so pretty?"

"Pretty," indeed! It was like this adorable child of nature not to
understand that she was the most perfect and faultless creation on
earth!

I leaned toward her. "_Is_ she pretty?" I repeated reproachfully.

She eyed me slyly.

"Oh, of course I know how _you_ feel," she said, "but draw me a
_picture_ of her."

"A picture!" I laughed. "All right, here goes: Eighteen, 'a daughter of
the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair'--that sort of thing.
Features classic--perfect oval, you know, and profile to set an artist
mad with joy. Eyes? Blue as Hebe's, but big and true and tender; hair, a
great, shining nugget of virgin gold. Form divine--the ideal of a poet's
dream--the alluring, the elusive, the unattainable, the despair of the
sculptor's chisel."

"My!" said Miss Billings, staring.

But I was not through. "Complexion? Her skin as smooth as the heart of a
seashell and as delicately warm as its rosy blush when kissed by the
amorous tide."

"Gee!" ejaculated my darling.

I looked at her closely. "And in one matchless cheek a dimple divine
such as might have been left by the barbed arrow of Cupid when it awoke
Psyche from her swoon of death. In short, she might be the dainty fairy
princess of our childhood fantasies, were she less superb in figure. On
the other hand, she might be the sunny-haired daughter of a Viking king,
were she not too delicately featured and molded."

That was all I could remember from the description as I had read it in a
novel, but I was glad I had stored it up, by Jove, for it suited her to
a dot. She didn't say a word for a moment, but just sat there eying me
kind of sidewise, her little upper lip lifted in an odd way. Then of a
sudden she shook her head and swung her knees up over the arm of her
chair.

"Well, Dicky, as a describer you sure are the slushy spreader. Say,
you've got Eleanor Glyn backed off the boards."

She went on eagerly: "I don't care, though; slushy or not, your
picture's just perfect for _her_. Why, your girl must be a