“And I took it off.  My hair was perfectly flat, and as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I wanted to laugh, to shriek.  But Colin Quale was as solemn as an owl.  ‘Ah,’ he said, ’I knew you had a lot of it!’

“He caught up the scarf which he had borrowed and flung it over my shoulders.  He gave a flick of his fingers against my forehead and pulled down a few hairs and parted them.  He whisked a little table in front of me, and thrust the bunch of roses into my arms.

“‘Now look at yourself,’ he commanded.

“I looked and looked again.  I had never dreamed that I could be like that.  The scarf and the table hid every bit of that Paris gown, and showed just a bit of white throat.  My plain parted hair and the roses—­I looked,” and now Delilah was blushing faintly, “I looked as I had always wanted to look—­like the lovely ladies in the old English portraits.

“‘Do you like it?’ Colin asked.

“He knew that I liked it from my eyes, and for the first time since I had met him, he laughed.

“‘All my life,’ he said, ’I have been looking for just such a woman as you.  A woman to make over—­to develop.  We must be friends, Miss Jeliffe.  You must let me know where I can see you again.’

“Well, I didn’t dance any more that night.  I wrapped the scarf about my head, and went back to my hotel.  Colin Quale went with me.  All the way he talked about the sacredness of beauty.  He opened my eyes.  I began to see that loveliness should be suggested rather than emphasized.  And I have told you this because I want you to understand about Colin.  He isn’t in love with me.  I rather fancy that back home in Amesbury or Newburyport, or whatever town it is that he hails from, there’s somebody whom he’ll find to marry.  To him I am a statue to be molded.  I am clay, marble, a tube of paint, a canvas ready for his brush.  It was the same way with this old house.  He wanted a setting for me, and he couldn’t rest until he had found it.  He has not only changed my atmosphere, he has changed my manner—­I was going to say my morals—­he brings to me portraits of Romney ladies and Gainsborough ladies—­until I seem positively to swim in a sea of stateliness.  And what I said just now about manners and morals is true.  A woman lives up to the clothes she wears.  If you think this change is on the surface, it isn’t.  I couldn’t talk slang in a Gainsborough hat, and be in keeping, so I don’t talk slang; and a perfect lady in a moleskin mantle must have morals to match; so in my little mantle I cannot tell a lie.”

To see her with lowered lashes, telling it, was the funniest thing in the world, and Porter shouted.  Then her lashes were, for a moment, raised, and the old Delilah peeped out, shrewd, impish.

“He wants me to change my name.  No, don’t misunderstand me—­not my last one.  But the first.  He says that Delilah smacks of the adventuress.  I don’t think he is quite sure of the Bible story, but he gets his impressions from grand opera—­and he knows that the Delilah of the Samson story wasn’t nice—­not in a lady-like sense.  My middle name is Anne.  He likes that better.”