Her arms and neck were bare. Her dress, immaterial as cobwebs, was of starbeams' restful hue. About her throat was a string of opals. They were colorful, though less so than her eyes and mouth. She was seated on a sofa. Loftus was standing. As always, he was superiorly sent out. Other men who got their things at the same places that he got his never succeeded, however they tried, in appearing half so well. "Do you know," Fanny continued, "she has improved vastly since that day when I saw you trying to pick her up. How did you ever manage? Tell me." Loftus, his hands in his pockets, shrugged a shoulder. "And she is so delightfully disdainful," Fanny ran on. "In Central Park this afternoon she turned up her nose at me. It is a very pretty nose, Royal, did you know that?" "I know that it is a bit out of joint," Loftus condescended at last to reply. "Dear me! Fancy that! But then the course of true love never did run smooth." Loftus assumed an air of great weariness. "Do drop it," he said. "You know very well that I have never cared for anyone but you." "Oh, of course," Fanny promptly and pleasantly retorted. "I may have had a doubt or two about it. But when you put this lady in a flat around the corner, then, naturally, you convinced me. It was a rather circuitous way, though, to go at it, don't you think?" Beside her on the sofa Loftus flopped. "Why do you always go back to that?" he asked, with the same affectation of weariness. Fanny turned from him. "I don't seem to be able to get away from it," she answered, but less promptly and pleasantly than before. Her fair face had grown serious. From her eyes the bantering look had gone. "Besides," she added after a moment, "you took her to Europe, and that did seem a trifle steep." "Would you like her to go back there?" Loftus tentatively inquired. In and out from Fanny's skirt a white slipper, butterflied with gold, moved restlessly. "I should have preferred that you had let her alone. It was not nice of you. It was not nice at all." From him she had turned to the carpet. She was looking at it still. "I wonder," she presently resumed, "if you ever suspected how it hurt me." Pausing a bit she looked up. "But you have been so dense, Royal." Loftus was about to interrupt. She checked him. "The first time I saw you I was just fifteen. That is eight years ago. Since then I can honestly say that until I accepted Arthur I had never thought of anyone but you. Never. Not once. Can you realize now how this affair of yours affected me? It hurt. If it had not been for that, do you suppose I would have taken the prince in the fairy tale? You were my prince." "But," Loftus protested, "this affair, as you call it, came about only _faute de mieux, faute de toi_. Why cannot I--why cannot we----?"