her wide-open, angry eyes, and he saw clearly at last the hidden canker
which was eating at her impatient heart. So this was what it meant, and
this was why she had reminded him at times of a pierced butterfly that
hides a mortal anguish beneath the beauty of its quivering wings?

"Oh, she isn't exactly the kind to blush unseen, you know," he responded
lightly.

"But what is her attraction? I can't fathom it," persisted Gerty, with a
burning curiosity. "Is it possible that men think her handsome?"

He laughed softly at her impatience, and then leaning back in his chair,
took up her question in a quizzical tone. "Is she handsome? Well, that
depends, I suppose, upon one's natural or acquired taste. Some people
like caviar--some don't."

Though she choked down her eagerness, he saw it still fluttering in her
beautiful white throat. "Then I may presume that she is caviar to the
respectable?" she said with a relapse into her biting sarcasm.

He made a gesture of alarmed protest: "You are to presume nothing--it is
never wise to presume against a woman."

"Then I won't if you'll tell me," she returned, "if you'll tell me quite
honestly and sincerely all that you think."

Before the mockery in his eyes she fell back with a sigh of
disappointment, but he answered the challenge presently in what she had
once described as his "paradoxical humour."

"Oh, well, my views have all been distant ones," he said, "but I should
judge her to be--since you ask me--a lady who insists upon a remarkable
natural beauty with a decidedly artificial emphasis."

He paused for a moment in order to enjoy the flavour of his epigram; but
Gerty was too much in earnest to waste her animated attention upon
words.

"Oh, of course she makes up," she retorted, "they all do that--men like
it."

His puzzling smile dwelt on her for an instant. "Well, I'd rather a
woman would be downright bad any day," he said, "it shows less."

"But is she bad?" asked Gerty, almost panting in her pursuit of
information. "That's what I want to know--of course she's artificial on
the face of it."

"On the face of _her_, you mean," he corrected, and concluded promptly,
"but I've never said anything against a woman in my life and it's too
late to begin just as I'm getting bald. Doesn't it suffice that the Lady
has kept her pipe tuned to the general melody?"

"You mean she's careful?"

"I mean nothing--do you?"

With a determined movement she sprang into a sitting