"Yes?" Her tone was tender.
"She must be a beauty, of course." He gazed at her with that in his eyes which said, as plainly as words could have said it, "You are beautiful."
But she was looking away, wondering to herself who it might be.
"I mean she must have what I call beauty," he added by way of explanation. "I don't count mere red and white beauty. Phrony Tripper has that." This was not without intention. Alice had spoken of Phrony's beauty one day when she saw her at the school.
"But she is very pretty," asserted the girl, "so fresh and such color!"
"Oh, pretty! yes; and color--a wine-sap apple has color. But I am speaking of real beauty, the beauty of the rose, the freshness that you cannot define, that holds fragrance, a something that you love, that you feel even more than you see."
She thought of a school friend of hers, Louise Caldwell, a tall, statuesque beauty, with whom another friend, Norman Wentworth, was in love, and she wondered if Keith would think her such a beauty as he described.
"She must be sweet," he went on, thinking to himself for her benefit. "I cannot define that either, but you know what I mean?"
She decided mentally that Louise Caldwell would not fill his measure.
"It is something that only some girls have in common with some flowers--violets, for instance."