"Fifteen?" Dick replied promptly. "Eighteen. They were married three years before she died. In fact--figure it out for yourself--they were actually married, by a Church of England dominie, and living in wedlock, about the same moment that you were squalling your first post-birth squalls in this world." "Yes, yes--go on," she urged nervously. "What was she like?" "She was a resplendent, golden-brown, or tan-golden half-caste, a Polynesian queen whose mother had been a queen before her, whose father was an Oxford man, an English gentleman, and a real scholar. Her name was Nomare. She was Queen of Huahoa. She was barbaric. He was young enough to out-barbaric her. There was nothing sordid in their marriage. He was no penniless adventurer. She brought him her island kingdom and forty thousand subjects. He brought to that island his fortune--and it was no inconsiderable fortune. He built a palace that no South Sea island ever possessed before or will ever possess again. It was the real thing, grass-thatched, hand-hewn beams that were lashed with cocoanut sennit, and all the rest. It was rooted in the island; it sprouted out of the island; it _belonged_, although he fetched Hopkins out from New York to plan it. "Heavens! they had their own royal yacht, their mountain house, their canoe house--the last a veritable palace in itself. I know. I have been at great feasts in it--though it was after their time. Nomare was dead, and no one knew where Graham was, and a king of collateral line was the ruler. "I told you he out-barbaricked her. Their dinner service was gold.--Oh, what's the use in telling any more. He was only a boy. She was half-English, half-Polynesian, and a really and truly queen. They were flowers of their races. They were a pair of wonderful children. They lived a fairy tale. And... well, Ernestine, the years have passed, and Evan Graham has passed from the realm of the young thing. It will be a remarkable woman that will ever infatuate him now. Besides, he's practically broke. Though he didn't wastrel his money. As much misfortune, and more, than anything else." "Paula would be more his kind," Ernestine said meditatively. "Yes, indeed," Dick agreed. "Paula, or any woman as remarkable as Paula, would attract him a thousand times more than all the sweet, young, lovely things like you in the world. We oldsters have our standards, you know." "And I'll have to put up with the youngsters," Ernestine sighed. "In the meantime, yes," he chuckled. "Remembering, always, that you, too, in time, may grow into the remarkable, mature woman, who can outfoot a man like Evan in a foot-race of love for possession." "But I shall be married long before that," she pouted. "Which will be your good fortune, my dear. And, now, good night. And you are not angry with me?" She smiled pathetically and shook her head, put up her lips to be kissed, then said as they parted: