could a man desire than the ideal traits he had been able to describe
only by using her as his inspiration.

When he ventured to look at her, one glance was enough to convince him
that she, too, had noticed the parallel--had been forced to recognize
her own features in the portrait he had constructed of an ideal. And she
had caught him in absent-minded contemplation of the hands he had been
describing. He knew that his face was the face of a guilty man.

"What is the next question?" he stammered, eager to answer it in a
manner calculated to allay her suspicions.

"The next question?" She glanced at the list, then with a voice of
velvet which belied the eyes, clear as frosty brown pools in November:
"The next question requires a description of her feet."

"Feet! Oh---they--they're rather large--why, her feet are enormous, I
believe--"

She looked at him as though stunned; suddenly a flood of pink spread,
wave on wave, from the white nape of her neck to her hair; she bent low
over her pad and wrote something, remaining in that attitude until her
face cooled.

"Somehow or other I've done it again!" he thought, horrified. "The best
thing I can do is to end it and go home."

In his distress he began to hedge, saying: "Of course, she is rather
tall and her feet are in some sort of proportion--in fact, they are
perfectly symmetrical feet--"