was a black velvet band round her waist and another on her wide
black hat. And yet another and a narrower band of black velvet round her
full white neck.

The face above that neck was not beautiful, for her little straight nose
was a shade too blunt, her upper lip a shade too long and too flat; her
large mouth, red and sullen-sweet, a shade too unfinished at the edges.
There was, moreover, a hint of fullness about the jaw and chin. But the
color and the texture of this face made almost imperceptible its flaws
of structure. It was as if it had erred only through an excess of
softness that made the flesh of it plastic to its blood, to the subtle
flame that transfused the white of it, flushing and burning to rose-red.
A flame that even in soaring knew its place; for it sank before it could
diminish the amazing blueness of her eyes; and it had left her forehead
and her eyelids to the whiteness that gave accent to eyebrows and
eyelashes black as her black hair.

That was how this girl's face, that was not beautiful, contrived to give
an impression of strange beauty, fascinating and stupefying as her
voice.

Her voice had begun again.

"It really isn't any good," it said.

"What isn't?"

"Your hanging about like this. It won't help you. It won't, really. You
don't know Winny."

"I say, did she ask you to tell me that?"

"Not she! 'Tisn't likely. And if she did, you don't suppose I'd let on.
I'm giving you the straight tip. I'm telling you what I know about her.
I'm her friend, else I couldn't do it."

"But--why?"

"Don't ask me--how do I know? I suppose I couldn't stand seeing you
waiting outside there, night after night, all for nothing."

She drew herself up, so that she seemed to be looking down at him; she
seemed, with all her youth, to be older than he, to be no longer
childlike and innocent and helpless. And her voice, her incomparable
voice, had an edge to it; it was the voice of maturity, of experience,
of the wisdom of the world.

"You can take it from me," said this voice, "that it doesn't do a man a
bit of good to go on hanging about a girl and worrying her when she
doesn't want him."

"You mean--she doesn't like me?"

"Like you? As far as I know she likes you well enough."

"Then--for the life of me I can't see why--"

"Liking a man isn't wanting him. And you're not going the way to make
Winny want you."

"Oh--"

He had drawn up in the middle of the pavement just to consider whether,
aft