ringer for
the girl at Radcliffe. Only thing you left out was the freckle on the
chin."

Freckle on the chin! By Jove, I left it out on purpose, for I thought
she might not like it. I wondered if all girls at Radcliffe had freckles
on the chin.

She lay back, regarding me inscrutably. "If she looks like that," she
sighed, "you ought to love her very much, Dicky."

I couldn't say anything, for words are so deuced inadequate, you know.
But I just made an effort to look it all.

"Of course," sighing, "you ought to feel that way; and, another thing,
Dicky: you'll never forget where you first saw her, will you? One of the
things one never forgets."

"Right in this room," I murmured; "and in that wicker chair."

"Really?" Her surprised ejaculation was delicious. By Jove, how
entrancingly coquettish of her! How jolly clever!

"Go on; tell me how she was dressed--never mind any more picture
business; just tell me in four or five words. Bet you can't do it!" She
slipped over again to the arm of my chair.

In her eyes was a challenge and I took it up.

"In black silk pajamas," I said daringly.

Her blue eyes opened wide. For a moment I feared she would be offended
at my audacity, but her birdlike carol of laughter reassured me.

"Say, _you're_ not so slow, _are_ you?"

And her hand came down on my back with a force that made me jump.

"Only shows," she gurgled merrily, "how little Jack knows about you.
Say, you'd better never tell _him_ about those black pajamas!"

She spoke chokingly through a storm of laughter as she rocked there
against my shoulder.

"And say--the joke of it!" She banged me on the back with a clublike
blow, incredible from that little hand. "The joke of it is, he thought
I'd be so safe with you! Oh, mamma!"

And off she went again.

I shifted uneasily. I did not like it--her merriment over what was
perfectly obvious and rational. Of course, Billings knew she would be
safe. Why the deuce shouldn't he?

But the matter of the pajamas was another thing. Her receiving me in
them was a contingency I could not possibly have anticipated and
avoided, and yet a withdrawal because of them or even because of her
presence here had been shown to be a course inexplicable to her. She was
too innocent, too ingenuous, too _ingenue_ to understand that I was
invading the sanctuary of her privacy. Yet to have taken any course that
would have appeared to make correction of her error come from me would
have