ore our eyes, time treats
the woman who is no longer young.--No, no! As long as she has her
beauty, a woman is under no necessity to bolster up her conscience, or
to be reasonable, or to think.--Think? God forbid! There are plain
women enough for that. We don't ask our Lady of Milo to be witty for
us, or to solve us problems. Believe me, there is more thought, more
eloquence, in the corners of a beautiful mouth--the upward look of two
dark eyes--than in all women have said or done from Sappho down.
Springy colour, light, music, perfume: they are all to be found in the
curves of a perfect throat or arm."

Madeleine's silence bristled with irony.

"And that," he went on, "was where the girl you are blaspheming had
such exquisite tact. She knew this. Her instinct taught her what was
required of her. She would fall into an attitude, and remain motionless
in it, as if she knew the eye must feast its full. Or if she did move,
and speak--for she, too, had hours of a desperate garrulity--then one
was content, as well. Her vitality was so intense that her whole body
spoke when her lips did; she would pass so rapidly from one position to
another that you had to shut your eyes for fear that, out of all this
multitude, you would not be able to carry one away with you.--If some
of her ways of expressing herself in motion could be caught and fixed,
a sculptor's fame would be made.--A painter's, if he could reproduce
the trick she has of smiling entirely with her eyes and eyebrows.--And
then her hands! Mada, I wonder you other women don't weep for envy of
them. She has only to raise them, to pass them over her forehead, or to
finger at her hair, and the world is hers.--Do you really think a man
asks soul of a woman with such eyes and hand as those?--Good God, no!
He worships her and adores her. Were is only one place for him, and
that's on his knees before her."

"Well, really, Heinz!" said Madeleine, and the spots on her cheeks
burnt a dull red. "In imagination, do you know, I'm carried just three
years backwards? Do you remember that spring evening, when you came
rushing in here to me? 'I've seen the most beautiful woman in the
world, and I'm drunk with her.' And how I couldn't understand? For I
thought her plain, just as I still do.--But then, if I remember aright,
your admiration was by no means the platonic, artistic affair it ...
hm! ... is now."

"It was not.--But now, you understand, Mada, that I think a man makes a
good