None of it was obvious. It was only by the match's glare, held
close to her face, that he could see the art that, in any less vivid
an illumination, concealed the art. He smiled at it all, and her eyes,
lifting, as the cigarette glowed, found the smile and sensitively
questioned it.

"Why the smile?" she said, quickly.

"Why? Oh, I don't know. A comparison. I suppose you people really
are artists. Mind you, I don't mean you. I'm not talking about you.
If it were you--well, I shouldn't talk about it."

For the first moment in all their conversation of that evening, she
looked ill-at-ease. A cloud passed over the sun of her self-assurance.
It seemed, on the instant, to turn her eyes from blue to grey.

"What do you mean by--a comparison?" she inquired, "and saying we're
artists? Artists at what? I believe you like to talk in riddles.
That's another thing too that 'ud be in your favour. People 'ud think
you so awfully clever. But what do you mean by comparison?"

He blew through his pipe, set it burning comfortably--took his
favourite seat on the table with his legs swinging like a
schoolboy's.

"A comparison--I mean a comparison between the women of your set,
and the women who toil at the same job in the streets of London."

"Yes, but you said that when you looked at me, when you smiled while
I was lighting the cigarette." The words hurried out of her lips,
dropping metallically with a hard sound on his ears.

"I know, but I told you I didn't refer to you. Good God!" He gripped
the table. "Do you think I could think about you like that? Look here,
it's no good having this nonsense; I won't say another word if you
think I am."

"Very well; all right. But tell me, at any rate, why you said it when
you looked at me."

"Because you're made-up--made-up to perfection. I should never have
seen it if I hadn't held the match up to your face. And there's the
difference--there's the comparison. The women in your set are
artists. There's all the difference in a Sargent and a man with half
a dozen coloured chalks on the pavement, between them and the women
you'll find in Piccadilly at night. But they're both workers in the
same dignified profession. When you think of the way those poor
wretches shove on their rouge--a little silk bag turned inside out
with eider-down on it and rouge powder on that, then the whole thing
jammed on to the face before a mirror in one of Swan & Edgar's shop
windows; any night you can see 'em d