"A sporting proposition!" he said with a chuckle. "It's all of that and more. But still, I'm curious about one thing. This Morgan _la fée_ business. If I am to wed a fairy I'll at least know why they call her one. I'll take on no witches sight unseen." Solange shrank a little. "I do not understand," she said, faltering. Her expectations had been somewhat dashed. De Launay spun a coin into the air and leaned forward as it clashed on the marble top of the table. "Heads I go, tails I don't!" he said, and clapped his hand over it as he looked at mademoiselle. "And if I go, I'll see why they call you Morgan _la fée_!" "Because of my coloring," said mademoiselle, wearily. "I have told you." "But I have not seen. Shall I lift my hand, mademoiselle, with that understanding?" Solange stared at him through the veil and he looked back at her mockingly. Angry and depressed at the same time, she nodded slowly, but her stake was large and she could not refrain from bending forward with a little intake of the breath as he slowly lifted his hand from the coin. Then she sighed deeply. It was heads. "Mademoiselle," he said with a bow, "I win! You will lift your veil?" Solange nodded. To her it seemed that _she_ had won. Then, with no sign of anxiety or embarrassment she bent her head slightly, slipped the coif back from her hair with one hand and lifted the veil with the other, sweeping them both away from her head with that characteristic toss that women employ on such occasions. Then she raised her face and looked full at him. He stared critically, and remained staring, but not critically. He had seen a good many women in his time, and many of them had been handsome. Some had been very beautiful. None of them had ever had much of an effect upon him. Even now he did not stop to determine in his mind whether this woman was beautiful as others had been. Her beauty, in fact, was not what affected him, although she was more than pretty, and her features were as perfect as an artist's dream. As she had said, it was her coloring that was extraordinary. He had seen sharp contrasts in his time, women with black hair and light-blue or gray eyes, women with blond hair and brown eyes, but he had never seen one with that mass of almost colorless, almost transparent hair, scintillant where the light fell upon it, black in shadow where the rolls of it cut off the light, nor had he seen such hair in such sharp contrast with eyes that were large and black as night and as deep as pools. The thing would have been uncanny and disturbing if it had not been that her skin was as fair as her hair, white and delicate. As it was, the whole impression was startlingly vivid and yet, after the first shock, singularly fascinating. The strange mixture of extreme blondness and deep coloration seemed to fit a nature that was both fiery and deep.