Phoebe said nothing, but a bright colour ran up over her pale skin and
her soft mouth set in a little obstinate line. The whole expression of
her face altered when she set her lips so that they covered the two
front teeth that at once made her face irregular and gave it
individuality. She lost her exquisite softness and became a little
stupid, for it made the lower part of her face too brief--what Vassie
called "buttoned up." Phoebe was not actually pretty, but she was very
alluring to men, or would be, simply because everything about her was
feminine--not womanly, but feminine. Her mouse-brown hair, straight and
soft and fine, refused to fall into the heavy polished curtains that
were the mode, and which made of Vassie's two waves of rich brass,
bright and hard-edged as metal. Phoebe's eyes were brown, not of the
opaque variety, but with the actually velvet look of a bee's body. The
girls at school had told her her eyes looked good to stroke. Her nose
was an indeterminate snub, her chin delightfully round but retreating,
falling away from a mouth like a baby's--so fine in texture, so petal
soft, so utterly helpless-looking, with its glint of two small square
teeth. Only when she looked obstinate and closed her mouth the charm
went out of her face as though wiped off like a tangible thing. She
looked almost sullen now, but Vassie, heedless of her, jumped up and,
pirouetting round to show herself off once more and to give herself that
feeling of mental poise for which physical well-being is needful, made
for the door. A swish, a flutter, a bang, and she was gone.

Left alone, Phoebe sat a moment longer, then rolled over on the bed
with a kitten-like motion and, stretching her arms above her head, lay
taut for a second, then relaxed suddenly. Head tucked in the pillow, she
apparently was lost in thought, for her brown eyes, slightly narrowed,
stared vacantly at the frilling of the pillow-slip. Then she gave a soft
little sound that had it not been so pretty would have been a giggle,
wriggled round, and slipped off the bed. She ran to the mirror and began
to take down her tumbled hair. As she raised her arms her round breast
swelled like a bird's when it lifts its head; her bright eyes and pursed
mouth, full of hairpins, were bird-like too. She was perpetually, to the
seeing eye, suggesting comparison with the animal creation; she was
bird-like, mouse-like, kitten-like, anything and everything that was
soft and small and o