CHAPTER III
"This is a list of particular and general questions for you to answer,Mr. Gatewood," she said, handing him a long slip of printed matter. "Thereplies to such questions as you are able or willing to answer you maydictate to me." The beauty of her modulated voice was scarcely asurprise--no woman who moved and carried herself as did this tall younggirl in black and white could reasonably be expected to speak with lessdistinction--yet the charm of her voice, from the moment her lipsunclosed, so engrossed him that the purport of her speech escaped him.
"Would you mind saying it once more?" he asked.
She did so; he attempted to concentrate his attention, and succeededsufficiently to look as though some vestige of intellect remained inhim. He saw her pick up a pad and pencil; the contour and grace of twodeliciously fashioned hands arrested his mental process once more.
"I _beg_ your pardon," he said hastily; "what were you saying, MissSoutherland?"
"Nothing, Mr. Gatewood. I did not speak." And he realized, hazily, thatshe had not spoken--that it was the subtle eloquence of her youth andloveliness that had appealed like a sudden voice--a sound faintlyexquisite echoing his own thought of her.
Troubled, he looked at the slip of paper in his hand; it was headed:
SPECIAL DESCRIPTION BLANK (_Form K_)
And he read it as carefully as he was able to--the curious little clamorof his pulses, the dazed sense of elation, almost of expectation,distracting his attention all the time.
"I wish you would read it to me," he said; "that would give me time tothink up answers."
"If you wish," she assented pleasantly, swinging around toward him inher desk chair. Then she crossed one knee over the other to support thepad, and, bending above it, lifted her brown eyes. She could have donenothing in the world more distracting at that moment.
"What is the sex of the person you desire to find, Mr. Gatewood?"
"Her sex? I--well, I fancy it is feminine."
She wrote after "Sex" the words "She is probably feminine"; looked athim absently, glanced at what she had written, flushed a little, rubbedout the "she is probably," wondering why a moment's mental wanderingshould have committed her to absurdity.
"Married?" she asked with emphasis.
"No," he replied, startled; then, vexed, "I beg your pardon--you mean toask if _she_ is married!"
"Oh, I didn't mean _you_, Mr. Gatewood; it's the next question, yousee"--she held out the blank toward him. "Is the person you are lookingfor married?"
"Oh, no; she isn't married, either--at least--trust--not--because if she_is_ I don't want to find her!" he ended, entangled in an explanationwhich threatened to involve him deeper than he desired. And, looking up,he saw the beautiful brown eyes regarding him steadily. They reverted tothe paper at once, and the white fingers sent the pencil flying.
"He trusts that she is unmarried, but if she _is_ (underlined) marriedhe doesn't want to find her," she wrote.
"That," she explained, "goes under the head of 'General Remarks' at thebottom of the page"--she held it out, pointing with her pencil. Henodded, staring at her slender hand.
"Age?" she continued, setting the pad firmly on her rounded, yieldingknee and looking up at him.
"Age? Well, I--as a matter of fact, I could only venture a surmise. Youknow," he said earnestly, "how difficult it is to guess ages, don't you,Miss Southerland?"
"How old do you _think_ she is? Could you not hazard a guess--judging,say, from her appearance?"
"I have no data--no experience to guide me." He was becoming involvedagain. "Would you, for practice, permit me first to guess your age, MissSoutherland?"
"Why--yes--if you think that might help you to guess hers."
So he leaned back in his armchair and considered her a very longtime--having a respectable excuse to do so. Twenty times he forgot hewas looking at her for any purpose except that of disinterested delight,and twenty times he remembered with a guilty wince that it was a matterof business.
"Perhaps I had better tell you," she suggested, her color rising alittle under his scrutiny.
"Is it eighteen? Just _her_ age!"
"Twenty-one, Mr. Gatewood--and you _said_ you didn't know her age."
"I have just remembered that I _thought_ it might be eighteen; but Idare say I was shy three years in her case, too. You may put it down attwenty-one."
For the slightest fraction of a second the brown eyes rested on his, thepencil hovered in hesitation. Then the eyes fell, and the moving fingerswrote.
"Did you write 'twenty-one'?" he inquired carelessly.
"I did not, Mr. Gatewood."
"What did you write?"
"I wrote: 'He doesn't appear to know much about her age.'"
"But I _do_ know--"
"You said--" They looked at one another earnestly.
"The next question," she continued with composure, "is: 'Date and placeof birth?' Can you answer any part of _that_ question?"
"I trust I may be able to--some day. . . . What _are_ you writing?"
"I'm writing: 'He trusts he may be able to, some day.' Wasn't that whatyou said?"
"Yes, I did say that. I--I'm not perfectly sure what I meant by it."
She passed to the next question:
"Height?"
"About five feet six," he said, fascinated gaze on her.
"Hair?"
"More gold than brown--full of--er--gleams--" She looked up quickly; hiseyes reverted to the window rather suddenly. He had been looking at herhair.
"Complexion?" she continued after a shade of hesitation.
"It's a sort of delicious mixture--bisque, tinted with a pinkishbloom--ivory and rose--" He was explaining volubly, when she began toshake her head, timing each shake to his words.
"Really, Mr. Gatewood, I think you are hopelessly vague on thatpoint--unless you desire to convey the impression that she is speckled."
"Speckled!" he repeated, horrified. "Why, I am describing a woman who ismy ideal of beauty--"
But she had already gone to the next question:
"Teeth?"
"P-p-perfect p-p-pearls!" he stammered. The laughing red mouth closedlike a flower at dusk, veiling the sparkle of her teeth.
Was he trying to be impertinent? Was he deliberately describing her? Hedid not look like that sort of man; yet _why_ was he watching her soclosely, so curiously at every question? Why did he look at her teethwhen she laughed?
"Eyes?" Her own dared him to continue what, coincidence or not, wasplainly a description of herself.
"B-b-b--" He grew suddenly timorous, hesitating, pretending to aperplexity which was really a healthy scare. For she was frowning.
"Curious I can't think of the color of her eyes," he said; "is--isn'tit?"
She coldly inspected her pad and made a correction; but all she did wasto rub out a comma and put another in its place. Meanwhile, Gatewood,chin in his hand, sat buried in profound thought. "_Were_ they blue?" hemurmured to himself aloud, "or _were_ they brown? Blue begins with a _b_and brown begins with a _b_. I'm convinced that her eyes began with a_b_. They were not, therefore, gray or green, because," he added in aburst of confidence, "it is utterly impossible to spell gray or greenwith a _b_!"
Miss Southerland looked slightly astonished.
"All you can recollect, then, is that the color of her eyes began withthe letter _b_?"
"That is absolutely all I can remember; but I _think_ they_were_--brown."
"If they _were_ brown they must be brown now," she observed, looking outof the window.
"That's true! Isn't it curious I never thought of that? What are youwriting?"
"Brown," she said, so briefly that it sounded something like a snub.
"Mouth?" inquired the girl, turning a new leaf on her pad.
"Perfect. Write it: there is no other term fit to describe its color,shape, its sensitive beauty, its--_What_ did you write just then?"
"I wrote, 'Mouth, ordinary.'"
/> "I don't want you to! I want--"
"Really, Mr. Gatewood, a rhapsody on a girl's mouth is proper in poetry,but scarcely germane to the record of a purely business transaction.Please answer the next question tersely, if you don't mind: 'Figure?'"
"Oh, I _do_ mind! I can't! Any poem is much too brief to describe herfigure--"
"Shall we say 'Perfect'?" asked the girl, raising her brown eyes in aglimmering transition from vexation to amusement. For, after all, itcould be _only_ a coincidence that this young man should be describingfeatures peculiar to herself.
"Couldn't you write, 'Venus-of-Milo-like'?" he inquired. "That islaconic."
"I could--if it's true. But if you mean it for praise--I--don't thinkany modern woman would be flattered."
"I always supposed that she of Milo had an ideal figure," he said,perplexed.
She wrote, "A good figure." Then, propping her rounded chin on onelovely white hand, she glanced at the next question:
"Hands?"
"White, beautiful, rose-tipped, slender yet softly and firmly rounded--"
"How _can_ they be soft and firm, too, Mr. Gatewood?" she protested;then, surprising his guilty eyes fixed on her hands, hastily droppedthem and sat up straight, level-browed, cold as marble. _Was_ hedeliberately being rude to her?