es and things as I have now. Only the face would be
altered."

"Well, go ahead, but don't pinch so, old girl."

"I pinch you to make you exert your mind. Now tell me truly--truly;
would you love me as you do now, would you be jealous of me, would
you--"

"I say, wait a bit! Don't drive on at such a rate. How ugly are you?"

"Very ugly; worse than Miss Filberte."

"Miss Filberte's not so bad."

"Yes, she is, Fritz, you know she is. But I mean ever so much worse;
with a purple complexion, perhaps, like Mrs. Armington, whose husband
insisted on a judicial separation; or a broken nose, or something wrong
with my mouth--"

"What wrong?"

"Oh, dear, anything! What _l'homme qui vir_ had--or a frightful scar
across my cheek. Could you love me as you do now? I should be the same
woman, remember."

"Then it'd be all the same to me, I s'pose. Let's turn in."

He got up, went over to the hearth, on which a small wood fire was
burning, straddled his legs, bent his knees and straightened them
several times, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers,
which were rather tight and horsey and defined his immense limbs. An
expression of profound self-satisfaction illumined his face as he looked
at his wife, giving it a slightly leery expression, as of a shrewd
rustic. His large blunt features seemed to broaden, his big brown eyes
twinkled, and his lips, which were thick and very red and had a cleft
down their middle, parted under his short bronze moustache, exposing two
level rows of square white teeth.

"It's jolly difficult to imagine you an ugly woman," he said, with a
deep chuckle.

"I do wish you'd keep your legs still," said Lady Holme. "What earthly
pleasure can it give you to go on like that? Would you love me as you do
now?"

"You'd be jolly sick if I didn't, wouldn't you, Vi, eh?"

"I wonder if it ever occurs to you that you're hideously conceited,
Fritz?"

She spoke with a touch of real anger, real exasperation.

"No more than any other Englishman that's worth his salt and ever does
any good in the world. I ain't a timid molly-coddle, if that's what you
mean."

He took one large hand out of his pocket, scratched his cheek
and yawned. As he did so he looked as unconcerned, as free from
self-consciousness, as much a slave to every impulse born of passing
physical sensation as a wild animal in a wood or out on a prairie.

"Otherwise life ain't worth tuppence," he added through his yawn.

Lady H