smile that intimated how
thoroughly he approved of her personal appearance.

"Ye--es," he said, "you're different, but I think you're almost as
pretty as you were."

"Am I?" she said. "What did you expect?"

"I didn't expect anything. I never do. It's my scheme for avoiding
disappointment. Is your head better?"

"No; it's aching abominably."

"Sorry. But it's rather hard lines for me, isn't it? I wish you _could_
have chosen some other time to be ill in."

"What does it matter whether I'm ill or not, if I'm not pretty?"

He smiled again.

"I don't mean, child, that you're ever not pretty."

"Thank you. I know exactly how pretty I am."

"Do you? How pretty do you think you are now?"

"Not half as pretty as Dora Nicholson. You know exactly how pretty she
is."

"I do. And I know exactly how pretty she'll be in five years' time.
That's the worst of those thin women with little, delicate, pink faces.
You know the precise minute when a girl like Dora'll go off. You know
the pinkness will begin to run when she's once past thirty. You can see
the crows' feet coming, and you know exactly how far they'll have got by
the time she's thirty-five. You know that when she's forty there'll be
two little lines like thumb-nail marks beside her ears, just here, and
you know that when she's forty-five the dear little lobes will begin to
shrivel up, and that when she's fifty the corners of her mouth will
collapse."

"And then?"

"Then, if you're a wise man you don't know any more."

"Poor little Dora. You _are_ a brute, Wilfrid."

"I'm not a brute. I was going to say that the best of you, dear, is that
I don't know how you'll look at fifty. I don't know how you'll look
to-morrow--to-night. You're never the same for ten minutes together.
When you get one of those abominable headaches you look perhaps as old
as you are. You're twenty-seven, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, I dare say you'll look twenty-seven when you are fifty. There's
something awfully nice about that sort of prettiness. It leaves things
delightfully vague. I can't _see_ you fifty."

"Perhaps I never shall be."

"Perhaps not. That's just it. You leave it open to me to think so. I
don't seriously contemplate your ever being forty. In fact your being
thirty is one of those melancholy and disastrous events that need not
actually occur. It's very tactful of you, Kitty."

"All the same, I'm not as pretty as Dora Nicholson."

"Dora Nicholson!"

"You can