d
think I'd have your best wishes to carry off such a prize. Have you
ever seen a more remarkable woman?"

"Oh, remarkable, yes. But--well----" And then she burst out: "It
seems to me unspeakably horrid. I can't say all I'd like to----"

"Pray, don't. And suppose we change the subject---- They're at it
again, damn them."

The men were looking very uncomfortable. The women were gazing at
their hostess with round apologetic eyes. Mrs. de Lacey, the youngest
and prettiest of the married women, had clasped her hands as if
worshipping at a shrine.

"It seems too terrible when we look back upon it!" she exclaimed, and
she infused her tones with the tragic ring of truth, "_dear_ Madame
Zattiany, that for even a little while we thought the most awful things
about you. We'd heard of the wonderful things surgeons had done to
mutilated faces during the war, and we were sure that some one of them
bad taken one of your old photographs--how could we even guess the
truth? How you must have hated us!"

"How could I hate you?" Madame Zattiany smiled charmingly. "I had not
the faintest idea you were discussing me."

"But why--why--did you shut yourself up so long after you came when you
must have known how mother and all your old friends longed to see you
again?"

"I was tired and resting." She frowned slightly. Such a question was
a distinct liberty and she had never either taken or permitted
liberties. But she banished the frown and met her tormentor's eyes
blandly. She had no intention of losing her poise for a moment.

"Ah! I said it!" cried Mrs. de Lacey. "I knew it was not because you
felt a natural hesitation in showing yourself. To me you seem brave
enough for anything, but it must have taken a lot of courage."

"Courage?"

"Why, yes! Fancy--well, you see, I'm such a coward about what people
say--especially if I thought they'd laugh at me--that if I'd done it I
should have run off and hidden somewhere."

"Then what object in invoking the aid of science to defeat nature at
one more point? And I can assure you, dear Mrs. de Lacey, that when
you are fifty-eight, if you have not developed courage to face the
world on every count it will merely be because you have indulged too
frequently in unbridled passions."

"Ah--yes--but you didn't have any qualms at all?"

"Certainly not. I confess I am surprised at your rather strained view
of what is really a very simple matter."

"_Simple_? Why, it's