An instant she stood motionless, the sunshine of her eyes still on me. Then, drawing a long breath, she turned away, pulling the pins out of her feathered hat with hands that trembled. I watched the process with the strained attention one gives at crucial moments to nothings. I laughed out of sheer inanity; every pulse in my body was throbbing. She lifted the hat from her shining head. She put it down. She unfastened her coat. In a minute she would turn again, and I should once more see that face imbued with light and fire. I waited for her voice. "I'm sure of it!" she cried, wheeling about of a sudden, with a laugh like caressing music, and confronting me again. "You didn't know me, John; did you?" "Why didn't I know you?" I gasped. "Why are you glad I don't know you? What does it all mean, Helen?" Instead of answering she laughed again. It was the happiest joy-song in the world. A mirthful goddess might have trilled it--a laugh like sunshine and flowers and chasing cloud shadows on waving grass. "Helen Winship, stop it! Stop this masquerade!" I shouted, not knowing what I did. "But I--I'm afraid I can't, John." The glorious face brimmed with mischief. In vain the Woman Perfect struggled to subdue her mirth to penitence. "I--I'm so glad to see you, John. Won't you--won't you sit down and let Kitty give you some tea?" Tea! At that moment! Clattering little blue and white cups and saucers, Miss Reid recalled herself to my remembrance. I had forgotten that she was in the room. I suspect that she dared not lift her head for fear I might see the laughter in her eyes. "I've made it extra strong, Mr. Burke," she managed to say, "because I'm starting for the _Star_ office to find the photo-engravers routing the noses and toeses off all my best beastesses." "Kitty thinks all photo-engravers the embodiment of original sin," said the Shining One. "They clip her bears' claws." "Well," returned Miss Reid, making a flat parcel of her drawings, "this is the den of Beauty and the beasts, and the beasts must be worthy of Beauty. Mr. Burke, don't you know from what county of fairyland Helen hails? Is she the Maiden Snow-white--but no; see her blush--or the Princess Marvel? And if she's Cinderella, can't we have a peep at the fairy godmother? Cadge will call her nothing but 'H. the M.'--short for 'Helen the Magnificent.' And--and--oh, isn't she!" "Kathryn!" Before that grieved organ-tone of reproach, Kitty's eyes filled. I could have wept at the greatness and the beauty of it, but the little artist laughed through her tears. "Helen Eliza, I repent," she said. "Time to be good, Mr. Burke, when she says 'Kathryn.'" Adjusting her hat before a glass, Kitty hummed with a voice that tried not quaver:-- "Mirror, mirror on the wall, Am I most beautiful of all? "Queen, thou art not the fairest now; Snow-white over the mountain's brow A thousand times fairer is than thou.