I don’t know how to thank you for your wonderful present. I didn’t mean you should give them to me, and I know you sent them. I shall keep them with pleasure and wear them with delight. It was so nice of you to do this. STEPHANIE PLATOW. Cowperwood studied the handwriting, the paper, the phraseology. For a girl of only a little over twenty this was wise and reserved and tactful. She might have written to him at his residence. He gave her the benefit of a week’s time, and then found her in his own home one Sunday afternoon. Aileen had gone calling, and Stephanie was pretending to await her return. “It’s nice to see you there in that window,” he said. “You fit your background perfectly.” “Do I?” The black-brown eyes burned soulfully. The panneling back of her was of dark oak, burnished by the rays of an afternoon winter sun. Stephanie Platow had dressed for this opportunity. Her full, rich, short black hair was caught by a childish band of blood-red ribbon, holding it low over her temples and ears. Her lithe body, so harmonious in its graven roundness, was clad in an apple-green bodice, and a black skirt with gussets of red about the hem; her smooth arms, from the elbows down, were bare. On one wrist was the jade bracelet he had given her. Her stockings were apple-green silk, and, despite the chill of the day, her feet were shod in enticingly low slippers with brass buckles. Cowperwood retired to the hall to hang up his overcoat and came back smiling. “Isn’t Mrs. Cowperwood about?” “The butler says she’s out calling, but I thought I’d wait a little while, anyhow. She may come back.” She turned up a dark, smiling face to him, with languishing, inscrutable eyes, and he recognized the artist at last, full and clear. “I see you like my bracelet, don’t you?” “It’s beautiful,” she replied, looking down and surveying it dreamily. “I don’t always wear it. I carry it in my muff. I’ve just put it on for a little while. I carry them all with me always. I love them so. I like to feel them.” She opened a small chamois bag beside her—lying with her handkerchief and a sketch-book which she always carried—and took out the ear-rings and brooch.