"You would make a picture," he added, smiling at her, "that the whole world would look at with interest; I'd have you holding your violin and looking out over the wide ocean with those sphinx-like eyes of yours, just as if the world and all its follies had no interest for you."
"And what is a sphinx?" asked Mona.
"A woman that no man understands," he answered carelessly. "There are a few such, and they are the only ones who interest men any length of time."
"And am I like one of them?" queried the girl.
"Oh, no," he answered, "except your eyes, and they are absolutely unreadable. Beyond them you are as easily understood as a flower that only needs the sun's smiles."
It was a bit of his poetic imagery faintly understood by Mona. "You must not mind my odd comparison," he continued, noticing her curious look, "it's only a fancy of mine, and then, you are an odd stick, as they used to say up in the country where I was born."
"And so you were not born in the city," she said with sudden interest. "What Uncle Jess has told me and what you have said has made me hate the city."
"I thought you said once you envied the city girls who came here in yachts," laughed Winn.
"I might like to dress as they do," she answered, a little confused, "but not to live where they do."
"And what has that to do with where I came from," he persisted, "and why are you glad I am country-born?"