"Pray, observe my unmatched eyes before you speak again of me as matchless."
"Your eyes are matchlessly beautiful!—more wonderfully beautiful than any others in all the world!" he cried.
Yet the currant wine was very, very mild.
"Such eyes," he continued excitedly, "are the most strangely lovely eyes I ever saw or ever shall see. Nobody in all the world, except you, has such eyes. I—I am going quite mad about them—about you—about everything. . . . I—the plain fact is that I love—such eyes—and—and every harmonious and lovely feature that—that b-b-belongs to them—and to—to you!"
She closed her painted fan slowly, slowly left her seat, took from the blue bowl on the window-sill the wild rose blooming there, turned and looked back at him, half smiling, waiting.
He sprang to his feet, scarcely knowing now what he was about; she waited, tall, slender, and fresh as the lovely flower she held.
Then, as he came close to her, she drew the wild rose through the lapel of his coat, and he bent his head and touched his lips to the blossom.
"When she and you—and Love—shall meet at last, you will first know her by her eyes," she began; and the next instant the smile froze on her face and she caught his arm in both hands and clung there, white to the lips.
