"Oh, of course I know how you feel," she said, "but draw me a picture of her."
"A picture!" I laughed. "All right, here goes: Eighteen, 'a daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair'—that sort of thing. Features classic—perfect oval, you know, and profile to set an artist mad with joy. Eyes? Blue as Hebe's, but big and true and tender; hair, a great, shining nugget of virgin gold. Form divine—the ideal of a poet's dream—the alluring, the elusive, the unattainable, the despair of the sculptor's chisel."
"My!" said Miss Billings, staring.
But I was not through. "Complexion? Her skin as smooth as the heart of a seashell and as delicately warm as its rosy blush when kissed by the amorous tide."
"Gee!" ejaculated my darling.
I looked at her closely. "And in one matchless cheek a dimple divine such as might have been left by the barbed arrow of Cupid when it awoke Psyche from her swoon of death. In short, she might be the dainty fairy princess of our childhood fantasies, were she less superb in figure. On the other hand, she might be the sunny-haired daughter of a Viking king, were she not too delicately featured and molded."
That was all I could remember from the description as I had read it in a novel, but I was glad I had stored it up, by Jove, for it suited her to a dot. She didn't say a word for a moment, but just sat there eying me kind of sidewise, her little upper lip lifted in an odd way. Then of a sudden she shook her head and swung her knees up over the arm of her chair.
"Well, Dicky, as a describer you sure are the slushy spreader. Say, you've got Eleanor Glyn backed off the boards."
She went on eagerly: "I don't care, though; slushy or not, your picture's just perfect for her. Why, your girl must be a ringer for the girl at Radcliffe. Only thing you left out was the freckle on the chin."
Freckle on the chin! By Jove, I left it out on purpose, for I thought she might not like it. I wondered if all girls at Radcliffe had freckles on the chin.