, under an apparent indifference to this indisputable glory,
her large dark eyes, her low brow beneath a veil of dusky hair, and her
mouth, which was a shade too obstinate in its lines.

"Very beautiful, all the same," said Bertin.

The Countess did not like to hear him praise other women. She shrugged
her shoulders slightly, but said nothing.

But the young girl, in whom the instinct of rivalry suddenly awoke,
ventured to say: "I do not find her beautiful at all."

"What! You do not think her beautiful?" said the painter.

"No; she looks as if she had been dipped in ink."

The Duchess, delighted, burst into laughter.

"Bravo, little one!" she cried. "For the last six years half the men
in Paris have been swooning at the feet of that negress! I believe that
they sneer at us. Look at the Comtesse de Lochrist instead."

Alone, in a landau with a white poodle, the Countess, delicate as a
miniature, a blond with brown eyes, whose grace and beauty had served
for five or six years as the theme for the admiration of her partisans,
bowed to the ladies, with a fixed smile on her lips.

But Nanette exhibited no greater enthusiasm than before.

"Oh," she said, "she is no longer young!"

Bertin, who usually did not at all agree with the Countess in the daily
discussions of these two rivals, felt a sudden irritation at the stupid
intolerance of this little simpleton.

"Nonsense!" he said. "Whether one likes her or not, she is charming; and
I only hope that you may become as pretty as she."

"Pooh! pooh!" said the Duchess. "You notice women only after they have
passed the thirtieth year. The child is right. You admire only _passee_
beauty."

"Pardon me!" he exclaimed; "a woman is really beautiful only after
maturing, when the expression of her face and eyes has become fully
developed!"

He enlarged upon this idea that the first youthful freshness is only the
gloss of riper beauty; he demonstrated that men of the world were wise
in paying but little attention to young girls in their first season, and
that they were right in proclaiming them beautiful only when they passed
into their later period of bloom.

The Countess, flattered, murmured: "He is right; he speaks as an artist.
The youthful countenance is very charming, but it is always a trifle
commonplace."

The painter continued to urge his point, indicating at what moment a
face that was losing, little by little, the undecided grace of youth,
really assumed it