-deep, passionate blue eyes set
in a Mongolian head. It was the face of a woman who could, morally
speaking, make mincemeat of nine young men out of ten. But she could not
have made one out of the number love her. For it has been decreed that
women shall win love--except in some happy exceptions--by beauty only.
The same unwritten law has it that a man's appearance does not matter--a
law much appreciated by some of us, and duly canonized by not a few.

The girl was evidently listening. She glanced at a little golden clock
on the mantel-piece, and then at the open window. She rose--she was
short, and somewhat broadly built--and went to the window.

"He will be back," she said to herself, "in a few minutes now."

She raised her hand to her forehead, and pressed back her hair with a
little movement of impatience, expressive, perhaps, of a great suspense.
She stood idly drumming on the window-sill for a few moments; then, with
a quick little sigh, she went back to the piano. As she moved she gave a
jerk of the head from time to time, as schoolgirls who have too much
hair are wont to do. The reason of this nervous movement was a wondrous
plait of gold reaching far below her waist. Catrina Lanovitch almost
worshipped her own hair. She knew without any doubt that not one woman
in ten thousand could rival her in this feminine glory--knew it as
indubitably as she knew that she was plain. The latter fact she faced
with an unflinching, cold conviction which was not feminine at all. She
did not say that she was hideous, for the sake of hearing a
contradiction or a series of saving clauses. She never spoke of it to
any one. She had grown up with it, and as it was beyond doubt, so was it
outside discussion. All her femininity seemed to be concentrated, all
her vanity centred, on her hair. It was her one pride, perhaps her one
hope. Women have been loved for their voices. Catrina's voice was
musical enough, but it was deep and strong. It was passionate, tender if
she wished, fascinating; but it was not lovable. If the voice may win
love, why not the hair?

Catrina despised all men but one--that one she worshipped. She lived
night and day with one great desire, beside which heaven and hell were
mere words. Neither the hope of the one nor the fear of the other in any
way touched or affected her desire. She wanted to make Paul Alexis love
her; and, womanlike, she clung to the one womanly charm that was
hers--the wonderful golden hair.