"
"Appears to be?"
Sir Donald stopped for a moment on the pavement under a gas-lamp. As the
light fell on him he looked like a weary old ghost longing to fade away
into the dark shadows of the London night.
"You say 'appears to be,'" he repeated.
"Yes."
"May I ask why?"
"Well, would you undertake to vouch for Lady Holme's understanding--I
mean for the infinite subtlety of it?"
Sir Donald began to walk on once more.
"I cannot find it in her conversation," he said.
"Nor can I, nor can anyone."
"She is full of personal fascination, of course."
"You mean because of her personal beauty?"
"No, it's more than that, I think. It's the woman herself. She is
suggestive somehow. She makes one's imagination work. Of course she is
beautiful."
"And she thinks that is everything. She would part with her voice, her
intelligence--she is very intelligent in the quick, frivolous fashion
that is necessary for London--that personal fascination you speak of,
everything rather than her white-rose complexion and the wave in her
hair."
"Really, really?"
"Yes. She thinks the outside everything. She believes the world is
governed, love is won and held, happiness is gained and kept by the husk
of things. She told me only to-night that it is her face which sings to
us all, not her voice; that were she to sing as well and be an ugly woman
we should not care to listen to her."
"H'm! H'm!"
"Absurd, isn't it?"
"What will be the approach of old age to her?"
There was a suspicion of bitterness in his voice.
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