an the history of France."

Artois, who was a novelist, nodded his head with the air of a man who
knew all about that.

"Maurice--Maurice Delarey has cared for me, in that way, for a long time.
I was very much surprised when I first found it out."

"Why, in the name of Heaven?"

"Well, he's wonderfully good-looking."

"No explanation of your astonishment."

"Isn't it? I think, though, it was that fact which astonished me, the
fact of a very handsome man loving me."

"Now, what's your theory?"

He bent down his head a little towards her, and fixed his great, gray
eyes on her face.

"Theory! Look here, Emile, I dare say it's difficult for a man like you,
genius, insight, and all, thoroughly to understand how an ugly woman
regards beauty, an ugly woman like me, who's got intellect and passion
and intense feeling for form, color, every manifestation of beauty. When
I look at beauty I feel rather like a dirty little beggar staring at an
angel. My intellect doesn't seem to help me at all. In me, perhaps, the
sensation arises from an inward conviction that humanity was meant
originally to be beautiful, and that the ugly ones among us are--well,
like sins among virtues. You remember that book of yours which was and
deserved to be your one artistic failure, because you hadn't put yourself
really into it?"

Artois made a wry face.

"Eventually you paid a lot of money to prevent it from being published
any more. You withdrew it from circulation. I sometimes feel that we ugly
ones ought to be withdrawn from circulation. It's silly, perhaps, and I
hope I never show it, but there the feeling is. So when the handsomest
man I had ever seen loved me, I was simply amazed. It seemed to me
ridiculous and impossible. And then, when I was convinced it was
possible, very wonderful, and, I confess it to you, very splendid. It
seemed to help to reconcile me with myself in a way in which I had never
been reconciled before."

"And that was the beginning?"

"I dare say. There were other things, too. Maurice Delarey isn't at all
stupid, but he's not nearly so intelligent as I am."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"The fact of this physical perfection being humble with me, looking up to
me, seemed to mean a great deal. I think Maurice feels about intellect
rather as I do about beauty. He made me understand that he must. And that
seemed to open my heart to him in an extraordinary way. Can you
understand?"

"Yes. Give me some more t