Pirouetting once more before the mirror, she divided one fleet glance between admiration for herself and scorn for Stanton. "Oh, yes, I felt perfectly sure that you'd insist upon having me 'pretty'!" she announced sternly. Then courtesying low to the ground in mock humility, she began to sing-song mischievously: "So Molly, Molly made-her-a-face, Made it of rouge and made it of lace. Long as the rouge and the lace are fair, Oh, Mr. Man, what do you care?" "You don't need any rouge or lace to make _you_ pretty!" Stanton fairly shouted in his vehemence. "Anybody might have known that that lovely, little mind of yours could only live in a--" "Nonsense!" the girl interrupted, almost temperishly. Then with a quick, impatient sort of gesture she turned to the table, and picking up book after book, opened it and stared in it as though it had been a mirror. "Oh, maybe my mind is pretty enough," she acknowledged reluctantly. "But likelier than not, my face is not becoming--to me." Crossing slowly over to Stanton's side she seated herself, with much jingling, rainbow-colored, sandalwood-scented dignity, in the chair that the Doctor had just vacated. "Poor dear, you've been pretty sick, haven't you?" she mused gently. Cautiously then she reached out and touched the soft, woolly cuff of his blanket-wrapper. "Did you really like it?" she asked. Stanton began to smile again. "Did I really like it?" he repeated joyously. "Why, don't you know that if it hadn't been for you I should have gone utterly mad these past few weeks? Don't you know that if it hadn't been for you--don't you know that if--" A little over-zealously he clutched at the tinsel fringe on the oriental lady's fan. "Don't you know--don't you know that I'm--engaged to be married?" he finished weakly. The oriental lady shivered suddenly, as any lady might shiver on a November night in thin silken clothes. "Engaged to be married?" she stammered. "Oh, yes! Why--of course! Most men are! Really unless you catch a man very young and keep him absolutely constantly by your side you cannot hope to walk even into his friendship--except across the heart of some other woman." Again she shivered and jingled a hundred merry little bangles. "But why?" she asked abruptly, "why, if you're engaged to be married, did you come and--buy love-letters of me? My love-letters are distinctly for lonely people," she added severely. "How dared you--How dared you go into the love-letter business in the first place?" quizzed Stanton dryly. "And when it comes to asking personal questions, how dared you send me printed slips in answer to my letters to you? Printed slips, mind you!... How many men are you writing love-letters to, anyway?"