compare my poor little life with hers.
But then she has such physical endurance. She breaks the ice, you know,
in her bath in the winter--of course I mean when there is ice."

"It isn't only in her bath that she breaks the ice," said Mrs. Creswick.

"I perfectly understand," Miss Townly said, vaguely. "You mean--yes,
you're right. Well, I prefer my bath warmed for me, but my circulation
was never of the best."

"Hermione is extraordinary," said Mrs. Creswick, trying to look at her
profile in the glass and making her face as Roman as she could, "I know
all London, but I never met another Hermione. She can do things that
other women can't dream of even, and nobody minds."

"Well, now she is going to do a thing we all dream of and a great many of
us do. Will it answer? He's ten years younger than she is. Can it
answer?"

"One can never tell whether a union of two human mysteries will answer,"
said Mrs. Creswick, judicially. "Maurice Delarey is wonderfully
good-looking."

"Yes, and Hermione isn't."

"That has never mattered in the least."

"I know. I didn't say it had. But will it now?"

"Why should it?"

"Men care so much for looks. Do you think Hermione loves Mr. Delarey for
his?"

"She dives deep."

"Yes, as a rule."

"Why not now? She ought to have dived deeper than ever this time."

"She ought, of course. I perfectly understand that. But it's very odd, I
think we often marry the man we understand less than any one else in the
world. Mystery is so very attractive."

Miss Townly sighed. She was emaciated, dark, and always dressed to look
mysterious.

"Maurice Delarey is scarcely my idea of a mystery," said Mrs. Creswick,
taking joyously a marron glace. "In my opinion he's an ordinarily
intelligent but an extraordinarily handsome man. Hermione is exactly the
reverse, extraordinarily intelligent and almost ugly."

"Oh no, not ugly!" said Miss Townly, with unexpected warmth.

Though of a tepid personality, she was a worshipper at Hermione's shrine.

"Her eyes are beautiful," she added.

"Good eyes don't make a beauty," said Mrs. Creswick again, looking at her
three-quarters face in the glass. "Hermione is too large, and her face is
too square, and--but as I said before, it doesn't matter the least.
Hermione's got a temperament that carries all before it."

"I do wish I had a temperament," said Miss Townly. "I try to cultivate
one."

"You might as well try to cultivate a mustache," Mrs. Creswick