k _plain_ with my hair squashed?"

In truth at the moment Grizel was not beauteous. Her little face was
without a trace of colour, marks of fatigue ringed the grey eyes, the
mass of soft brown hair was flattened by the pressure of the hat. Just
a little, tired, colourless face, not even in the first flush of youth,
for the fine lines which are the surest tell-tale of advancing years
were already beginning to show at the corners of her eyes. Katrine was
sympathetically agreed that Grizel _was_ plain this afternoon, but
Martin felt a sudden flushing of the cheeks as he met the glance of the
long eyes; a sudden swelling of the throat.

He did not know if Grizel were plain or not; what was more to the
purpose, he didn't care. An ordinary, commonplace woman might be
appraised for her looks, but this woman's lure lay in something
infinitely more subtle. Ill or well, tired or alert, sorry or glad, she
remained a very type of womanhood, from whose eyes looked out the
eternal challenge, the eternal question. No man in Grizel's presence
could forget that she was a woman, and that some time, somewhere, some
fortunate man might be her mate.

As he turned back to the tea-table Martin asked himself for the
hundredth time if Grizel were conscious of her power. There was nothing
consciously provocative in her glance; her manner with men was
indifferent to the point of boredom, yet there it was, a turn of the
head, a droop of the lid, a tone in the low rich voice proclaimed the
man's woman, the woman who from childhood to age is served and
worshipped, who on a desert island would find a Prince Charming behind
the first palm.

The serving of Grizel's tea engrossed for some minutes the entire
attention of her two hosts. She was supplied with a table, a footstool,
a cushion for her back; her tea was first watered, secondly milked, and
thirdly strengthened to its original state; her toast was cut into tiny
strips. She yawned at intervals with infantile abandon; it is to be
feared she scattered many crumbs upon the grey pile carpet, but unlike
ninety-nine women out of a hundred, she made no effort to fluff her
flattened hair, or to arrange the delicate disorder of her attire.
There was something primitive, almost savage, in her childlike
naturalness of mien.

In excuse for such lapses from conventional manners, Katrine was wont to
remind herself that Grizel lived so much alone: no one in the grim town
house but the old great-a