“Of course,” said the young lady, giving me at once her charming smile and her signed check, “I knew that _you_ knew, from what I said when I went away from here this morning, that I meant to come back just as soon as I could, to deliver the goods, and to get the goods.” What I had seen of her uncle helped me to recognize a genuine emotion hiding behind the flippancy of her words. I freely confess that if my wife or my sister had said or done just what Miss Clarenden did, I would have found it preposterous, alarming, in bad taste. But that girl had some strange power to make one see at once that what she did was simple and natural; the best thing in the circumstances, and therefore not foolish or ill-bred. “I know you’ll understand, the moment I explain: I’ve always said to myself that the man who carved that Dancer would understand a lot. Well, when I came here this morning, I simply couldn’t shake Jack. He stuck to my skirts like a burr. You know we’re to be married in the autumn.” The pink roses in her cheeks flamed into American Beauties for an instant, and then became themselves again, in a way that I’ve often wished might be managed on the stage. “Jack has nothing in the world but what he earns. To be sure, he earns a lot, being—no, no, not a plumber, but a very, very civil engineer.” Her time-worn jests seemed dewy-fresh as they fell from her lips. Witty as well as beautiful, I thought. Oh, I admit my weakness! Miss Clarenden continued her explanation. “Very likely, though, we shall have to economize, at first. And I didn’t want Jack to see me spend four hundred dollars right off bang, the very day after we landed, even for something I long for as I do for that marble hand; real art, too. You see, Jack got awfully gloomy over that last dozen pairs of gloves I got at the Bon Marché, the day before we sailed. Said he feared that at first he couldn’t give me all I’d been accustomed to, and so on. And, honestly, I was afraid that he’d be doing a bit of mental arithmetic right here in your studio, and doing it wrong! Saying to himself that if twenty-four kid gloves cost a hundred francs, why should one marble hand cost so many hundred dollars, or something like that!” I saw that the tears were very near those laughing eyes of hers, but she went bravely on. “Jack doesn’t know much about art yet, but I’m going to explain it all to him, the _morbidezza_ and everything. And I’m just crazy to see what you’ve done for me.” Her voice with its smiles and tears floated in to Senator Bullwinkle as I led her toward the work of her hope. The marble was fairly heavy, but the Senator was more than fairly strong, and in my absence, he had gathered it up between his hands, and had sat down to muse upon it. In fact, it lay across his knees, just where he had said he would like to take Mariellen. I don’t know how, but he presently succeeded in making a place for both. I think Mariellen helped him.