l beauty had as an aureole to illuminate it and to
set it off a manner that was wholly devoid of mannerisms--of
those that men and women think out and exhibit to give added
charm to themselves--tricks of cuteness, as lisp and baby stare;
tricks of dignity, as grave brow and body always carried rigidly
erect; tricks of sweetness and kindliness, as the ever ready
smile and the warm handclasp. Susan, the interested in the
world about her, Susan, the self-unconscious, had none of these
tricks. She was at all times her own self. Beauty is anything
but rare, likewise intelligence. But this quality of naturalness
is the greatest of all qualities. It made Susan Lenox unique.

It was not strange--nor inexcusable that the girls and their
parents had begun to pity Susan as soon as this beauty developed
and this personality had begun to exhale its delicious perfume.
It was but natural that they should start the whole town to
"being kind to the poor thing." And it was equally the matter of
course that they should have achieved their object--should have
impressed the conventional masculine mind of the town with such
a sense of the "poor thing's" social isolation and
"impossibility" that the boys ceased to be her eagerly admiring
friends, were afraid to be alone with her, to ask her to dance.
Women are conventional as a business; but with men
conventionality is a groveling superstition. The youths of
Sutherland longed for, sighed for the alluring, sweet, bright
Susan; but they dared not, with all the women saying "Poor
thing! What a pity a nice man can't afford to have anything to
do with her!" It was an interesting typical example of the
profound snobbishness of the male character. Rarely, after Susan
was sixteen, did any of the boys venture to ask her to dance and
so give himself the joy of encircling that lovely form of hers;
yet from babyhood her fascination for the male sex, regardless
of age or temperament, had been uncanny--"naturally, she being
a love-child," said the old women. And from fourteen on, it grew
steadily.

It would be difficult for one who has not lived in a small town
to understand exactly the kind of isolation to which Sutherland
consigned the girl without her realizing it, without their fully
realizing it themselves. Everyone was friendly with her. A
stranger would not have noticed any difference in the treatment
of her and of her cousin Ruth. Yet not one of the young men
would have thought of m