Cynthia smiled at her husband again. If good manners never won fair lady, they must have often come very near it. It warmed Cynthia’s heart to reflect that this husband of hers was just as courteous to her now, after two years of marriage, as on the very first day he ever met her; how many women could say the same? “As a very great treat, I think you might be allowed to, for once,” she said, in a tender little voice that matched her smile, feeling like a mother, and a wife, and a lover, and a sister, and all sorts of other things as well towards this adorably helpless person, so infinitely inferior to herself and at exactly the same time so infinitely superior, whom she had elected to marry. “Now watch, and I’ll show you what happens to sandy eyebrows when they get into my toils. It’s supposed to be hopelessly bad policy, I know, but I have no secrets from you, darling; not even toilet ones.” “I won’t have my wife’s eyebrows insulted,” Guy retorted, dropping his long, lean frame into an arm-chair. “They’re not sandy, they never have been sandy, and they never will be sandy.” “My dear old Guy,” laughed Cynthia, taking effective steps to clear the brows in question of any lingering imputations of sandiness, “you’d never notice if they were, so don’t pretend you would. Why, I don’t believe you could even say off-hand what colour my eyes are.” “My dear!” exclaimed her husband, with righteous indignation. “Well—what colour are they then?” Guy shifted a trifle uneasily in his chair. “A—a sort of greeny-brown,” he said, somewhat defiantly. “Commonly called hazel. Is that what you mean?” “Hazel,” Guy nodded with some relief. “Yes.” “Guy, you’re hopeless!” Cynthia laughed. “What sort of a husband do you think you are? Really! Not to have the faintest idea of the colour of his own wife’s eyes! Well, you might have said blue and been complimentary at any rate.” “Do you mean to say they’re not hazel?” her husband inquired. Cynthia nodded with emphasis. “I should hope I do! They’re gray, my poor child. If you don’t believe me, ask George to-night. I shouldn’t call George a particularly observant man, but I think his powers will probably have carried him that far. Guy, I think you’d better begin rather hurriedly to talk about the weather.” Guy began to laugh instead. He had a curious and rather fascinating laugh. He laughed with a kind of guilty air, as if he knew he were doing something he shouldn’t, but for the life of him could not help it. His laughter was subdued but hearty, and reminded one irresistibly of a small boy stealing jam. “I meant gray,” said Mr. Guy Nesbitt, stealing jam. Cynthia became engrossed in the intricacies of her beautifying operations and the conversation languished. Guy was the first to break the silence. “Looking forward to this evening, darling?” he asked.