handsome, good-humored face. Then, having made a satisfactory choice of
dishes, his features recovered their usual look of genial contentment,
and he felt carelessly in his pocket for the letter which he presently
produced and laid on Gerty's pillow. His life had corresponded so evenly
with his bodily impulses that the perfection of the adjustment had
produced in him the amiable exterior of an animal that is never crossed.
It was a case in which supreme selfishness exerted the effect of
personality.

Leaving the letter where he had placed it, Gerty sat sipping her coffee
while she looked up at him with the candid cynicism which lent a piquant
charm to the almost doll-like regularity of her features.

"You did not get three hours sleep and yet you're so fresh you smell of
soap," she observed as an indignant protest, "while I've had six and I'm
still too tired to move."

"Oh, I'm all right--I never let myself get seedy," returned Perry, with
his loud though pleasant laugh. "That's the mistake all you women
make."

Half closing her eyes Gerty leaned back and surveyed him with a curious
detachment--almost as if he were an important piece of architecture
which she had been recommended to admire and to which she was patiently
trying in vain to adjust her baffled vision. The smaller she screwed her
gaze the more remotely magnificent loomed his proportions.

"How you manage it is more than I can understand," she said.

Perry stared for a moment in an amiable vacancy at the coffee pot. Then