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 room with a suddenness that bewildered him, she cried: "How do you like my photographs? See!— They're just the proofs I'm to choose from."

The single jet of gas above him did not give light enough for him to make them out, and she led him over to the piano-lamp that was glowing secretly under its rose-leaf shade in a far corner. He was smiling when he looked at the first picture; she enjoyed the change of his expression. "Do you like that one?" she asked.

Did he like it! He gazed at it as he would have gazed at her if he could have had her unconscious of his scrutiny and undefended by the distracting challenge of her eyes. She was posed glancing aside, in the shy demureness he most loved in her, her neck turned prettily, her ear showing in its nest of brown hair as round and white and fragile as a little field-bird's egg. After waiting a moment for his answer, she gave him the next picture, almost embarrassed by his devouring silence; and he blinked at the roguish eyes which met his full under level eyebrows with a twinkling gravity as if trying to deny the smile that curled the corners of her mouth. "That's the one I like," she said, standing beside him to look at it over his arm. "That—and this."

The last was a more formal portrait, a three-quarters view, with the chin up saucily and the expression one of young alertness and sly penetration. "I've decided on those two—the last two."

He turned back to the first. "May I . . . have this, then?"