real Margaret beneath the flowing grace and the nut-brown hair and the
eyes like blue larkspur. Though the tribal customs had shaped her body
and formed her manners, a rare essence of personality escaped like a
perfume from the hereditary mould of the race.

As he looked at her now, sitting gracefully on the ruby brocade of one
of the rosewood chairs, with her lovely head framed by the band of
intricate carving, he was aware that the delicate subtleties and
shadings of her feminine charm made an entirely fresh appeal to his
perceptions, if not to his senses. He had never admired her appearance
more than he did at that instant; and yet his gaze was as dispassionate
as the one he bestowed on the Sully portrait of which she reminded him.
Her eyes were very soft; there was a faint smile on her thin pink lips
which gave the look of coldness, of reticence to her face. With her head
bent and her hands folded in her lap, she sat there waiting
pensively--for what? It occurred to him suddenly with a shock that she
was deeper, far deeper than he had ever suspected.

"You are so different from the other girls, Margaret," he said at last,
oppressed by the old difficulty of making conversation. "You don't
belong to the same world with Mary Byrd and--" He was going to add
"Patty Vetch," but he checked himself before the name escaped him.

She seemed to melt rather than break from her attitude of waiting, so
gently did her movements sink into the shadowy glow of the firelight.

"No, I don't," she replied, with a touch of sadness. "I sometimes wish
that I did."

"You wish that you did!" Here was surprise at last. "But, why, in
Heaven's name, should you wish that when you are everything that they
ought to be?"

"As if that mattered!" There was a tone in her voice that was new to
him. "It's gone out of fashion to be superior. Nobody even cares any
longer about your being what you ought to be. I've been trained to be
the kind of girl that doesn't get on to-day, full of all sorts of
forgotten virtues and refinements. Nobody looks at me because everybody
is staring so hard at the girls who are improperly dressed. There is
only one place where I can be sure of having attention, and that is in
an Old Ladies' Home. Old ladies admire me."

For the second time that day he found himself startled by the
eccentricities of the feminine mind; but in Margaret's passive
resignation there was none of Patty's rebellion against the cruelty and
in