But she did!"

"Priceless!"

"Wasn't it? But women are like that when they belong to the 'old guard.'
Do you think she can be right?"

"If it is so, Lady Sellingworth must be a very unusual sort of woman."

"She is--now. For she really did give up all in a moment. And she has
never repented of what she did, as far as anyone knows. I think--"

She paused, looking thoughtful at the mirror.

"Yes?" said Craven gently.

"I think it's rather fine to plunge into old age like that. You go on
being young and beautiful till everyone marvels, and then one day--or
night, perhaps--you look in the glass and you see the wrinkles as they
are--"

"Does any woman ever do that?"

"_She_ must have! And you say to yourself, '_C'est fini!_' and you throw
up the sponge. No more struggles for you! From one day to another you
become an old woman. I think I shall do as Lady Sellingworth has done."

"When?"

"When I'm--perhaps at fifty, yes, at fifty. No man really cares for a
woman, as a woman wants him to care, after fifty."

"I wonder," said Craven.

She sent him a sharp, questioning glance.

"Did you ever wonder before you went to Berkeley Square?"

"Perhaps not."

A slight shadow seemed to pass over Miss Van Tuyn's face.

"I believe there was a famous French actress who was loved after she was
seventy," said Craven.

"Then the man must have been a freak."

"Lots of us are freaks."

"I don't think you are," she said provocatively.

"Why not?"

"I have my little private reasons," she murmured.

At that moment Craven was conscious of a silly desire to take her in his
arms, bundle of vanities though he knew her to be. He hated himself for
being so ordinary. But there it was!

He looked at her eyebrows. They were dark and beautifully shaped and
made an almost unnerving contrast with her corn-coloured hair.

"I know what you are thinking," she said.

"Impossible!"

"You are thinking that I darken them. But I don't."

And then Craven gave up and became frankly foolish.

CHAPTER V

Though ordinary enough in her youthful egoism, and entirely _du jour_ in
her flagrantly shown vanity, Miss Van Tuyn, as Craven was to find out,
was really something of an original. Her independence was abnormal and
was mental as well as physical. She lived a life of her own, and her
brain was not purely imitative. She not only acted often originally,
but thought for herself. She was not merely a very pretty girl. She was
someb