"
She settled herself back in the low easy chair, with her hands clasped
behind her head.
"And now I'd like to know why you prefer her to me," she demanded saucily.
"Do you think her handsomer?"
He looked her over from the rippling brown hair to the trim suede shoes.
"No," he smiled; "they don't make them handsomer."
"More intellectual?"
"No."
"Of a better disposition?"
"I like yours, too."
"More charming?"
"I find her so, saving your presence." "Please justify yourself in detail."
He shook his head, still smiling. "My justification is not to be itemized.
It lies deeper--in destiny, or fate, or whatever one calls it."
"I see." She offered Markham's verses as an explanation:
"Perhaps we are led and our loves are fated,
And our steps are counted one by one;
Perhaps we shall meet and our souls be mated, After the burnt-out sun."
"I like that. Who did you say wrote it?"
The immobile butler, as once before, presented a card for her inspection.
Ridgway, with recollections of the previous occasion, ventured to murmur
again: "The fairy prince.
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