He had looked slightly annoyed while she was speaking, but now he bent toward her with his most charming manner, his most winning smile. "You know my greatest weakness, Dita? I try to overcome it, really I do," in laughing excuse, "but in spite of will or reason those superstitions of mine persist. Alas! They do." He admitted it as a naughty little boy might admit a passion for stealing jam. "And I have tremendous faith in that old charm of yours." He picked up another cigarette from his skilfully rolled little heap, placed as orderly on the table beside him as if they were his paint brushes. "Ever since I have had it," he went on, "the luck of the high gods has been mine. Princessin, Contessin and high Altessin still clamoring to have their portraits painted. The critics amiable and almost intelligent, money pouring into my coffers and pouring out faster than it comes in--I wish there were such a thing as a money-tight purse--and best of all, ah, best of all, the love of my heart so near, so near." His eyes held the warm glow which changed, irradiated them. "The star of my life comes slipping, wavering through the spaces of the sky and down the purple pathways of heaven to my arms." He leaned forward quickly and almost enfolded her. "Eugene!" She stood haughty and tall before him. "You assume entirely too much. You have from the beginning. More, much more, than I have ever given you any reason to assume. According to the tradition the amulet can only bring one luck when it is given with the heart's love; and I never gave it to you, Eugene, never. You laughingly filched it one day when I took it off the chain about my neck, that you might look at it more closely. And you are so sure, so sure of me, when I am anything but sure of myself. I have never deceived you as to the state of my feelings. How would that have been possible when I am still so doubtful myself? Ah, those doubts!" "They are nothing, dearest, nothing. I shall brush them away as I brush cobwebs." He put his hands upon her shoulders and stood gazing deeply into her eyes. "Ah," she shook her head, and, at the same time, stepped away from him, "I am no more sure that I love you than I was six months ago." "Never any more sure?" His voice deep and rich as a low-toned bell. Her black eyelashes lay long on her cheek, where the crimson, the hue of a jacqueminot rose petal, was spreading. "There are moments," she admitted, "times when I am with you that I believe that the magic word has been spoken and that my heart has blossomed in purple and red, that I truly love you, but," she shook her head sighingly, "the moment I am away from you, I know that that is not so; that you haven't said the magic word yet, 'Gene."