" And Georgie stroked her ridiculous little nose with an
affectation of content.

"Thank heaven you aren't a beauty, or there'd be no holding you at all!"

"That's just where you mistake. If I were really pretty, instead of
having a _petit minois chiffone_ I should be able to sit placidly and
leave it all to my profile. As it is I have to exert myself to charm,
and everyone knows charm is far more fatal to man than mere looks. I am
rather fascinating, aren't I, in spite of my pudding face? What was
Blanche like, Judy? Didn't you see her the other day in town?"

"Yes, I met her at a Private View," admitted Judy. "She had sort of gone
to pieces, if you know what I mean. I don't suppose it was a sudden
process really, but it came on me suddenly."

"What did she look like?"

"As large as life and twice as unnatural. She had lost her 'eye' for
making up, as they say everyone does, and the rouge stood out on the
white powder so that you could see it a mile off. She gushed at me, and
I felt she wasn't meaning a single word she said. She had her husband
with her and introduced him. She even patronised me for not having one.
I didn't say I'd sooner not than have one like hers, because she
wouldn't have believed me, and it would have been rude. But he was a
little wisp of a man--a seedy little clerk. She knew she couldn't carry
off the idea of having made a good match from a worldly point of view,
so she murmured something to me about how beautiful true love was when
it was the 'real thing,' and how she had never known what the meaning of
life was till she met 'Teddie.' Do stop me; I'm being an awful cat! But
that woman aroused all the cat in me; she's such an awful liar, and a
liar is the worst of sinners, because he--or perhaps more generally
she--is so absolutely disintegrating to the whole social fabric."

"I suppose she must have been very fascinating once upon a time."

"She was, though, oddly enough, men either hated her or were deeply in
love with her, and as time went on the sort that were in love with her
grew more and more fearful. But it was young girls she attracted most. I
used to think her the most wonderful thing in the world, and I used to
be enraged if I introduced her to anyone and they hated her at sight. If
one's eye for making up gets out as one grows older, one's eye for life
gets a more and more deadly clearness--unless you're like Blanche, when
I suppose you grow more and more incapable of seeing th