"This is a list of particular and general questions for you to answer,
Mr. Gatewood," she said, handing him a long slip of printed matter. "The
replies to such questions as you are able or willing to answer you may
dictate to me." The beauty of her modulated voice was scarcely a
surprise--no woman who moved and carried herself as did this tall young
girl in black and white could reasonably be expected to speak with less
distinction--yet the charm of her voice, from the moment her lips
unclosed, so engrossed him that the purport of her speech escaped him.
"Would you mind saying it once more?" he asked.
She did so; he attempted to concentrate his attention, and succeeded
sufficiently to look as though some vestige of intellect remained in
him. He saw her pick up a pad and pencil; the contour and grace of two
deliciously fashioned hands arrested his mental process once more.
"I _beg_ your pardon," he said hastily; "what were you saying, Miss
Southerland?"
"Nothing, Mr. Gatewood. I did not speak." And he realized, hazily, that
she had not spoken--that it was the subtle eloquence of her youth and
loveliness that had appealed like a sudden voice--a sound faintly
exquisite echoing his own thought of her.
Troubled, he looked at the slip of paper in his hand; it was headed:
SPECIAL DESCRIPTION BLANK
(_Form K_)
And he read it as carefully as he was able to--the curious little clamor
of his pulses, the dazed sense of elation, almost of expectation,
distracting his attention all the time.
"I wish you would read it to me," he said; "that would give me time to
think up answers."
"If you wish," she assented pleasantly, swinging around toward him in
her desk chair. Then she crossed one knee over the other to support the
pad, and, bending above it, lifted her brown eyes. She could have done
nothing in the world more distracting at that moment.
"What is the sex of the person you desire to find, Mr. Gatewood?"
"Her sex? I--well, I fancy it is feminine."
She wrote after "Sex" the words "She is probably feminine"; looked at
him absently, glanced at what she had written, flushed a little, rubbed
out the "she is probably," wondering why a moment's mental wandering
should have committed her to absurdity.
"Married?" she asked with emphasis.
"No," he replied, startled; then, vexed, "I beg your pardon--you mean to
ask if _she_ is married!"
"Oh, I didn't mean _you_, Mr. Gatewood; it's the next question, you
see"--she held out the blank toward him. "Is the person you are looking
for married?"
"Oh, no; she isn't married, either--at least--trust--not--because if she
_is_ I don't want to find her!" he ended, entangled in an explanation
which threatened to involve him deeper than he desired. And, looking up,
he saw the beautiful brown eyes regarding him steadily. They reverted to
the paper at once, and the white fingers sent the pencil flying.
"He trusts that she is unmarried, but if she _is_ (underlined) married
he doesn't want to find her," she wrote.
"That," she explained, "goes under the head of 'General Remarks' at the
bottom of the page"--she held it out, pointing with her pencil. He
nodded, staring at her slender hand.
"Age?" she continued, setting the pad firmly on her rounded, yielding
knee and looking up at him.
"Age? Well, I--as a matter of fact, I could only venture a surmise. You
know," he said earnestly, "how difficult it is to guess ages, don't you,
Miss Southerland?"
"How old do you _think_ she is? Could you not hazard a guess--judging,
say, from her appearance?"
"I have no data--no experience to guide me." He was becoming involved
again. "Would you, for practice, permit me first to guess your age, Miss
Southerland?"
"Why--yes--if you think that might help you to guess hers."
So he leaned back in his armchair and considered her a very long
time--having a respectable excuse to do so. Twenty times he forgot he
was looking at her for any purpose except that of disinterested delight,
and twenty times he remembered with a guilty wince that it was a matter
of business.
"Perhaps I had better tell you," she suggested, her color rising a
little under his scrutiny.
"Is it eighteen? Just _her_ age!"
"Twenty-one, Mr. Gatewood--and you _said_ you didn't know her age."
"I have just remembered that I _thought_ it might be eighteen; but I
dare say I was shy three years in her case, too. You may put it down at
twenty-one."
For the slightest fraction of a second the brown eyes rested on his, the
pencil hovered in hesitation. Then the eyes fell, and the moving fingers
wrote.
"Did you write 'twenty-one'?" he inquired carelessly.
"I did not, Mr. Gatewood."
"What did you write?"
"I wrote: 'He doesn't appear to know much about her age.'"
"But I _do_ know--"
"You said--" They looked at one another earnestly.
"The next question," she continued with composure, "is: 'Date and place
of birth?' Can you answer any part of _that_ question?"
"I trust I may be able to--some day. . . . What _are_ you writing?"
"I'm writing: 'He trusts he may be able to, some day.' Wasn't that what
you said?"
"Yes, I did say that. I--I'm not perfectly sure what I meant by it."
She passed to the next question:
"Height?"
"About five feet six," he said, fascinated gaze on her.
"Hair?"
"More gold than brown--full of--er--gleams--" She looked up quickly; his
eyes reverted to the window rather suddenly. He had been looking at her
hair.
"Complexion?" she continued after a shade of hesitation.
"It's a sort of delicious mixture--bisque, tinted with a pinkish
bloom--ivory and rose--" He was explaining volubly, when she began to
shake her head, timing each shake to his words.
"Really, Mr. Gatewood, I think you are hopelessly vague on that
point--unless you desire to convey the impression that she is speckled."
"Speckled!" he repeated, horrified. "Why, I am describing a woman who is
my ideal of beauty--"
But she had already gone to the next question:
"Teeth?"
"P-p-perfect p-p-pearls!" he stammered. The laughing red mouth closed
like a flower at dusk, veiling the sparkle of her teeth.
Was he trying to be impertinent? Was he deliberately describing her? He
did not look like that sort of man; yet _why_ was he watching her so
closely, so curiously at every question? Why did he look at her teeth
when she laughed?
"Eyes?" Her own dared him to continue what, coincidence or not, was
plainly a description of herself.
"B-b-b--" He grew suddenly timorous, hesitating, pretending to a
perplexity which was really a healthy scare. For she was frowning.
"Curious I can't think of the color of her eyes," he said; "is--isn't
it?"
She coldly inspected her pad and made a correction; but all she did was
to rub out a comma and put another in its place. Meanwhile, Gatewood,
chin in his hand, sat buried in profound thought. "_Were_ they blue?" he
murmured to himself aloud, "or _were_ they brown? Blue begins with a _b_
and brown begins with a _b_. I'm convinced that her eyes began with a
_b_. They were not, therefore, gray or green, because," he added in a
burst of confidence, "it is utterly impossible to spell gray or green
with a _b_!"
Miss Southerland looked slightly astonished.
"All you can recollect, then, is that the color of her eyes began with
the letter _b_?"
"That is absolutely all I can remember; but I _think_ they
_were_--brown."
"If they _were_ brown they must be brown now," she observed, looking out
of the window.
"That's true! Isn't it curious I never thought of that? What are you
writing?"
"Brown," she said, so briefly that it sounded something like a snub.
"Mouth?" inquired the girl, turning a new leaf on her pad.
"Perfect. Write it: there is no other term fit to describe its color,
shape, its sensitive beauty, its--_What_ did you write just then?"
"I wrote, 'Mouth, ordinary.'"
"I don't want you to! I want--"
"Really, Mr. Gatewood, a rhapsody on a girl's mouth is proper in poetry,
but scarcely germane to the record of a purely business transaction.
Please answer the next question tersely, if you don't mind: 'Figure?'"
"Oh, I _do_ mind! I can't! Any poem is much too brief to describe her
figure--"
"Shall we say 'Perfect'?" asked the girl, raising her brown eyes in a
glimmering transition from vexation to amusement. For, after all, it
could be _only_ a coincidence that this young man should be describing
features peculiar to herself.
"Couldn't you write, 'Venus-of-Milo-like'?" he inquired. "That is
laconic."
"I could--if it's true. But if you mean it for praise--I--don't think
any modern woman would be flattered."
"I always supposed that she of Milo had an ideal figure," he said,
perplexed.
She wrote, "A good figure." Then, propping her rounded chin on one
lovely white hand, she glanced at the next question:
"Hands?"
"White, beautiful, rose-tipped, slender yet softly and firmly rounded--"
"How _can_ they be soft and firm, too, Mr. Gatewood?" she protested;
then, surprising his guilty eyes fixed on her hands, hastily dropped
them and sat up straight, level-browed, cold as marble. _Was_ he
deliberately being rude to her?