“Is—­it?” scoffed Barton.

“It is!” asserted the Older Man.  “The woman, I tell you, who fathoms heroism in the fellow that every one else thought was a knave—­she’s got something to brag about!  The fellow who’s shrewd enough to spy unutterable lovableness in the woman that no man yet has ever even remotely suspected of being lovable at all—­God!  It’s like being Adam with the whole world virgin!”

“Oh, that may be all right in theory,” acknowledged the Younger Man, with some reluctance.  “But—­”

“Now, speaking of Miss Edgarton,” resumed the Older Man monotonously.

“Oh, hang Miss Edgarton!” snapped the Younger Man.  “I wouldn’t be seen talking to her!  She hasn’t any looks!  She hasn’t any style!  She hasn’t any—­anything!  Of all the hopelessly plain girls!  Of all the—!”

“Now see here, my young friend,” begged the Older Man blandly.  “The fellow who goes about the world judging women by the sparkle of their eyes or the pink of their cheeks or the sheen of their hair—­runs a mighty big risk of being rated as just one of two things, a sensualist or a fool.”

“Are you trying to insult me?” demanded the Younger Man furiously.

Freakishly the Older Man twisted his thin-lipped mouth and one glowering eyebrow into a surprisingly sudden and irresistible smile.

“Why—­no,” he drawled.  “Under all existing circumstances I should think I was complimenting you pretty considerably by rating you only as a fool.”

“Eh?” jumped Barton again.

“U-m-m,” mused the Older Man thoughtfully.  “Now believe me, Barton, once and for all, there ’s no such thing as a ’hopelessly plain woman’!  Every woman, I tell you, is beautiful concerning the thing that she’s most interested in!  And a man’s an everlasting dullard who can’t ferret out what that interest is and summon its illuminating miracle into an otherwise indifferent face—­”

“Is that so?” sniffed Barton.

Lazily the Older Man struggled to his feet and stretched his arms till his bones began to crack.

“Bah!  What’s beauty, anyway,” he complained, “except just a question of where Nature has concentrated her supreme forces—­in outgrowing energy, which is beauty; or ingrowing energy, which is brains!  Now I like a little good looks as well as anybody,” he confided, still yawning, “but when I see a woman living altogether on the outside of her face I don’t reckon too positively on there being anything very exciting going on inside that face.  So by the same token, when I see a woman who isn’t squandering any centric fires at all on the contour of her nose or the arch of her eyebrows or the flesh-tints of her cheeks, it surely does pique my curiosity to know just what wonderful consuming energy she is busy about.