“How do you know these things, Janet?  What makes you say them?”

“You mean who’s taught me them—­eh?  What man has ever taken a sufficient interest in me to show me so much of his sex?  Isn’t that what you mean?”

“No!”

“Oh, I know I’m ugly enough.  That glass has a habit of reminding me of it every morning.  I could smash that glass sometimes with the back of a hair-brush, only it might break the hair-brush.”

“Janet, you’re cruel sometimes!  Things like that never enter my dreams!” Sally exclaimed passionately.

“Bless your heart,” said Janet, “facts never do.  You take facts as they come; you act on them instinctively, but you don’t realize them.  I am ugly.  There’s no doubt about it.  You don’t think I’m ugly, but you see I am.  That prompts your question without knowing it.  But men have made fools of themselves—­even over me.  There was one man at the school last year—­took a fancy to me, I believe because I was so ugly.  Just like James II. and the ugly maids-of-honour.  I was going to live with him.  Can you believe that?  And one night at one of the dances, we were kicking up a row a bit—­dancing about as if we were lunatics—­and my hair fell down—­there’s not much for a pin to stick into at the best of times.  I remember laughing and looking across the room at him.  Well, I saw an expression in his eyes that settled it.  He looked as if he could see me—­just like I know I am—­in the mornings when I first wake up—­all frowsy and fuddled, with this little bit of a mat I’ve got, sticking out in tails, about as long as your hand, on the pillow.  It takes a bit of courage for a man to even go and live with a woman after he’s seen her like that.  I assure you it didn’t take me much courage to tell him I’d changed my mind.”

Sally watched her and the pain that she felt as she listened furrowed her brow into frowns.  She knew that there was more than this, more than the bare statement behind this little story.  That was Janet’s way of putting it, the way Janet made herself look on at life, the apparently heartless aspect in which she viewed everything.  To sympathize would only sting her to still more bitter sarcasm.  Sally said nothing, the pity was in her eyes.

“I’ve never told you that before, have I?” said Janet.

“No.”

“And I suppose you’re terribly shocked because I even ever thought of living with a man?”

“No, I’m not.  If you loved him and—­and he couldn’t marry you.”

Out of the corner of her eyes Janet watched her, rubbing her face vigorously with the towel to conceal her observation.  In that moment then, she saw the end of Sally, drew the matter out in her mind, as, with hurried strokes, she might have sketched a passing face upon the slip of paper.

“Well, you run on down to breakfast,” she said.  “You’ll be late; it’s five minutes to eight.”

A whole week passed by, and Sally heard no more of Traill.  Every day, when she went out to lunch, or left the office after work was over, she looked up and down King Street in the hope, almost the expectation, of seeing him waiting for her to come.  Then the expectation died away; the hope grew fainter and fainter, like a shadow that the sun casts upon the sundial until, at an hour before setting, it is scarcely discernible.