beautiful woman,
and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other things. When
she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled and looked at her
and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow uninteresting, he
would take up his hat and go away, and so he never knew how very
uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given time enough in
which to demonstrate the fact. He never considered that, were he married
to her, he could not take up his hat and go away when she became
uninteresting, and that her remarks, which were not brilliant, could not
be smiled away either. They would rise up and greet him every morning,
and would be the last thing he would hear at night.

Miss Delamar's beauty was so conspicuous that to pretend not to notice
it was more foolish than well-bred. You got along more easily and simply
by accepting it at once, and referring to it, and enjoying its effect
upon other people. To go out of one's way to talk of other things when
every one, even Miss Delamar herself, knew what must be uppermost in
your mind, always seemed as absurd as to strain a point in politeness,
and to pretend not to notice that a guest had upset his claret, or any
other embarrassing fact. For Miss Delamar's beauty was so distinctly
embarrassing that this was the only way to meet it,--to smile and pass
it over and to try, if possible, to get on to something else. It was on
account of this extraordinary quality in her appearance that every one
considered her beauty as something which transcended her private
ownership, and which belonged by right to the polite world at large, to
any one who could appreciate it properly, just as though it were a
sunset or a great work of art or of nature. And so, when she gave away
her photographs no one thought it meant anything more serious than a
recognition on her part of the fact that it would have been unkind and
selfish in her not to have shared the enjoyment of so much loveliness
with others.

Consequently, when she sent one of her largest and most aggravatingly
beautiful photographs to young Stuart, it was no sign that she cared
especially for him.

How much young Stuart cared for Miss Delamar, however, was an open
question, and a condition yet to be discovered. That he cared for some
one, and cared so much that his imagination had begun to picture the
awful joys and responsibilities of marriage, was only too well known to
himself, and was a state of mind already