"They're so much worn this year," she laughed, and wondered the while what evil instinct tempted her to play this dangerous game; why she could not refrain from peering into the deeper places of his nature to see if her image were still there and still supreme? Why should she, almost involuntarily, work to create and foster an emotion upon which she set no store, which indeed, only amused her in its milder manifestations and frightened her when it grew intense? He showed symptoms of unwelcome seriousness now, but she would have none of it. "Go on," she urged. "Unless you give her a few more features she will be like little Red Riding Hood's grandmother." "And she has," he proceeded obediently, "eyebrows and eyelashes--" "One might have guessed them." "--beyond the common, long and dark and soft. The rest of her face is the only possible setting for her eyes. It is perfection." "And is she gentle, womanly, tender? Is she, I so often wonder, good enough to you?" "She treats me hundreds of times better than I deserve." "Doesn't she rather swindle you? Doesn't she let you squander your time?"--she glanced at the clock--"your substance?"--she bent to lay her cheek against the violets at her breast--"your affection upon her--?" "And how could she be kinder? And when I marry her--" "And _if_," Miss Knowles amended. "There's no question about it," he retorted. "She knows that I shall marry her." Miss Knowles looked unconvinced. "She knows that she will marry me." Miss Knowles looked rebellious. "She knows that I shall never marry anyone else." Miss Knowles took that apparently for granted. "Dear boy!" said she. "That I have waited seven years for her." "Poor boy!" said she. "That I shall wait seven more for her." "Silly boy!" said she. "And so I stopped this afternoon to tell her that I'm coming home to marry her in two or three months." "Coming home?" she questioned with not much interest. "Where are you going?" "To Japan on a little business trip. One of the big houses wants to get some papers and testimony and that sort of thing out of a man who is living in a backwoods village there for his health--and his liberty. None of their own men can afford time to go. And I got the chance, a very good one for me--but I tire you." "No; oh, no," said Miss Knowles politely. "You are very interesting." "Then you shouldn't fidget and yawn. You lay yourself open to misinterpretation. To continue: a very great chance for me. The firm is a big firm, the case is a big case, and it will be a great thing for me to be heard of in connection with it." "Some nasty scandal, of course." "Not exactly. It is the Drewitt case. I wonder if you heard anything about it."