aiety, her
fringe was curled and her pretty face rouged with the best of them.
And, if further need be to show the absurdity of having called
her performance 'a triumph of naturalness over the jaded spirit
of modernity,' let us reflect that the little mimic was not a real
old-fashioned girl after all. She had none of that restless naturalness
that would seem to have characterised the girl of the early Victorian
days. She had no pretty ways--no smiles nor blushes nor tremors.
Possibly Demos could not have stood a presentment of girlishness
unrestrained.

But, with her grave insouciance, Miss Cissie Loftus had much of the
reserve that is one of the factors of feminine perfection, and to most
comes only, as I have said, with artifice. Her features played very,
very slightly. And in truth, this may have been one of the reasons of
her great success. For expression is but too often the ruin of a face;
and, since we cannot, as yet, so order the circumstances of life that
women shall never be betrayed into 'an unbecoming emotion,' when the
brunette shall never have cause to blush nor La Gioconda to frown,
the safest way by far is to create, by brush and pigments, artificial
expression for every face.

And this--say you?--will make monotony? You are mistaken, tots caelo
mistaken. When your mistress has wearied you with one expression, then
it will need but a few touches of that pencil, a backward sweep of that
brush, and ho, you will be revelling in another. For though, of course,
the painting of the face is, in manner, most like the painting of
canvas, in outcome it is rather akin to the art of music--lasting, like
music's echo, not for very long. So that, no doubt, of the many little
appurtenances of the Reformed Toilet Table, not the least vital will
be a list of the emotions that become its owner, with recipes for
simulating them. According to the colour she wills her hair to be for
the time--black or yellow or, peradventure, burnished red--she will
blush for you, sneer for you, laugh or languish for you. The good
combinations of line and colour are nearly numberless, and by their
means poor restless woman will be able to realise her moods in all their
shades and lights and dappledoms, to live many lives and masquerade
through many moments of joy. No monotony will be. And for us men
matrimony will have lost its sting.

But that in the world of women they will not neglect this art, so
ripping in itself, in its result so w