"
The flattery was too evidently sincere not to be pleasing. So long as
praise is genuine, few men are so exacting as to insist that it be also
intelligent.
"Thank you," he said; "you at least understand the art of saying nice
things. Though that," he added, with his warmest smile, "is perhaps
only natural in one who must have had so many nice things said to her."
She laughed, her ready, girlish laugh, which always seemed to him so
young; and they climbed the crooked stairs of Studio Building, their
breath hardly being any longer sufficient for much speech.
"I'm going to take you to Arthur Fenton's first," Rangely observed, as
they paused to rest on one of the landings. "These stairs are awful. I
wonder how he gets his elderly sitters up here."
Miss Merrivale seated herself upon a bench benevolently placed on the
landing.
"They sit down here, of course," she responded.
"This is a sort of life-saving station," he remarked, seating himself
beside her.
"Oh, Mr. Rangely, how awfully funny you are."
"It's my trade; I have to be to earn my living. Now you and I are the
only survivors from a wreck."
"Alone on a desert island?"
"Life-saving stations are not generally on desert islands; but I hope
you wouldn't mind so very much if it were."
She looked at him with bright eyes, and then let her glance fall.
"That would depend," she responded demurely.
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