“You’re like both.  That’s where you score.”

She caught her breath with a sob.  “You’re not laughing at me?”

“Get up on your chair and look in the glass over the mantelpiece.”

She stepped up, and with a flush and a raising of the chin as if she were doing something much more radical than looking in a mirror, as if, indeed, she were stripping herself quite naked, she faced her image.

“You’ve never looked at yourself before,” said the old man.

“’Deed I have,” she snapped.  “How do you think I put my hat on straight?”

“It never is,” he retorted, and repeated grimly and exultingly, “You’ve never looked at yourself before.”

She looked obliquely at her reflection and ran her hands ashamedly up and down her body, and tried for a word and failed.

“Are you not beautiful?” he said.

“Imphm.  There’s no denying I’m effective,” she admitted tartly, and stepped down and stood for a moment shivering as if she had done something distasteful.  And then climbed on to the chair again.  “In evening dress, like the one Sarah Bernhardt wore in La Dame aux Camelias, I dare say I could look all right with a fan—­a big fan of ostrich feathers.”  This time she faced the image directly and almost gloatingly, as if it were food.  “But considering my circumstances, that is a wild hypothesis.  I suppose ...  I ... am ... all right.  But I suppose I’m just good-looking for a private person.  I’d look the plainest of the plain beside Zena or Phyllis Dare.  Would I not?  Would I not?”

“You’d look plain beside no one but Venus,” said Mr. Mactavish James, “and her you’d better with your tongue.”

“Ah!” She breathed deeply, as if at last she drank.  “So it doesn’t matter my chin being so wee?  I’ve always hankered after a chin like Carson’s.  I think it makes one looked up to, irrespective of one’s merits.  But if what you say is true I’ve no call to worry.  I’ll do as I am.”  She shot an intense scowling glance at the old man.  “You’re sure I’ll do?”

“Ay, lass, you’ll do,” he answered gravely.

She burst into a light peal of laughter, as different from her usual mirth as if she had been changed from gold to silver.  “Oh dear!  Oh dear!” she cried, her voice suddenly high-pitched and femininely gay.  “What nonsense we’re talking!  Do—­for what?  It’s all pairfectly ridiculous—­as if looks mattered one way or another!” An animation of so physical a nature had come on her that her heart was beating almost too quickly for speech, and her body, being uncontrolled by her spirit, abandoned itself to entirely uncharacteristic gestures which were but abstract designs drawn by her womanhood.  She lifted her face towards the mirror and pouted her lips mockingly, as if she knew that some spirit buried in its glassy depths desired to kiss them and could not.  She stood on her toes on the hard wooden seat, so that it looked as if she were wearing high heels, and her hands, which