Well, she had fulfilled her destiny, justified Eugene Gresham's prophecy. She heard his words to her, spoken the last time she had seen him, three months before, as plainly as if his voice still rang in her ears. "Perdita, your destiny is written on your face. It includes marrying a millionaire and having your portrait painted by me." Fateful words! She had just married the millionaire, but even here, upon the threshold of this new life, she was constrained to halt a moment and cast one backward glance, "just for the old love's sake." It was the night before Eugene Gresham sailed for Europe to paint the portraits of "Princessin, Contessin and high Altessin." Again she awaited him. Again she heard his step on the stair without, a quick, light step with an odd halt in it. He was coming, and her heart beat. How it beat as she stood there breathless beside the window! "Perdita!" Eugene's voice. He was across the room in a flash, both her hands in his. "Here, let me see you in the light." He drew her toward a lamp. "Two years, two years since we have met, and me wasting time painting in the desert places when I might have been with you. Time is not in the Far East. Ah, my cousin!" (the relationship was remote) he sighed. "Why, as I live," with a quick change of tone, "you've got another dimple, and that makes you a new and lovelier Perdita." She flushed adorably. "How nice and southern," she cried with an attempt at lightness, "and how exactly like you, just like the old 'Gene." "The old 'Gene," his eyes still holding hers, "has never changed." "How--how--are the pictures going?" withdrawing her hands from his. "Beautifully!" he said carelessly. "The glassy eyes of the millionaires are all turning toward me, and I have more commissions to make beautiful on canvas their pug-nosed, fat-faced wives than I care to accept. Those ladies hail me as a great psychological artist. Their mirrors are so cruel to them that when my brushes flatter them they say that I paint their souls; strip away the husk of the flesh and reveal enduring loveliness."