He came towards her, looking at her gloomily, looking himself thin and
grey and shivery--but always like a prince.

"You have more flesh to keep you warm than I have," said he, quite
roughly.

"Thank you!" She bridled and flushed. Her massive figure, for a
woman of her years, was perfect; but of course she was as sensitive as
the well-proportioned female always is to the suspicion that she was
too fat. "You have not lost the art of paying graceful compliments."

"I meant it for one," said he, replying to her scoffing tone. "You put
me to shame, Deb, with your vigour and youthfulness. I know how old you
are, and you don't look it by ten years. And you are a beauty still,
let me tell you. It may not be a graceful compliment, but at least it
is sincere. Even these girls here--"

"Nonsense about beauty--at my time of life," she broke in; but she
smiled behind her frown, and forgave him his remark about her flesh.
"You and I are too old to talk that sort of stuff now."

"Do you think I am so very old?" he asked her, standing before her
writing-table, as if inviting a serious judgment.

She glanced quickly over him. His moustache was white, his ivory-tinted
face scratched with fine lines about the eyes; he stooped at the
shoulders, and his chest had hollowed in. Yet she could have returned
his compliment and called him a beauty still. He was so to her. Every
line and movement of his body had a distinction all his own, and "What