how good-looking--or
plain. She had tried, with Cecile's help, to look her very best. Cecile
had declared the result was a success. "_Miladi est merveilleusement
belle ce soir, mais vraiment belle!_" But a maid, of course, would not
scruple to lie about such a matter. One could not depend on a maid's
word. She was in love with Alick Craven, desperately in love as only an
elderly women can be with a man much younger than herself. And that love
made her afraid.

There was a tiny mole on her face, near the mouth. She wished she
had had it removed in Geneva. Why had not she had that done? No doubt
because she was so accustomed to it that for years she had never thought
of it, had never even seen it. Now suddenly she saw it, and it seemed
to her noticeable, an ugly blemish. Anyone who looked at her must surely
look at it, think of it. For a moment she felt desperate about it, and
her whole body was suddenly hot as if a flame went over it. Then the
mocking look came into her eyes. She was trying to laugh at herself.

"He doesn't think of me in _that_ way! No man will ever think of me in
_that_ way again!"

But the mocking expression died out and the fear did not go. She was
afraid of Craven's young eyes. It was terrible to feel so humble,
so full of trembling diffidence. Oh, for a moment of the conquering
sensation she had sometimes known in the years long ago when men had
made her aware of her power!

Since their meeting in Dindie Ackroyde's drawing-room her friendship
with Craven, renewed, had grown into something like intimacy. But there
was an uneasiness in it which she felt acutely. There were humbug and
fear in this friendship. Because she was desperately in love she was
forced to be insincere with Craven. Haunted perpetually by the fear of
losing what she had, the liking of a man who was not, and could never
be, in love with her, she had to give Craven the impression that she
was beyond the age of love, that the sensations of love were dead in her
beyond hope of resurrection. She had to play at detachment when her one
desire was to absorb and to be absorbed, had to sustain an appearance of
physical coldness while she was burning with physical fever. She had to
create a false atmosphere about her, and to do it so cleverly that it
seemed absolutely genuine, the emanation of her personality in unstudied
naturalness.

Her lack of all affection helped her to deceive. Though in moments she
might seem constrained, oddly