Part 35

“Is it true?” she cried, turning from one to the other. “Tell me, is it really true?”

“My dear young lady,” groaned Taylor, “what can I say to palliate my unpard—”

“Nevermind that! I don’t care. I don’t care anything about it. It’s my own fault. I stopped and listened. I couldn’t help it. It means so much to me. You can’t know. No man can understand. Is it true that I—that my face—”

Oren Taylor was an artist in more than his art: he possessed the rare sense of the fit thing to do and say.

“It is true,” he answered quietly, “that I have seen few faces more justly and beautifully modeled than yours.”

“And you,” she said, whirling upon Dr. Strong. “Can you do what you said? Can you make me good-looking?”

“Not I. But you yourself can.”

“Oh, how? What must I do? D—d—don’t think me a fool!” She was half-sobbing now. “It may be silly to long so bitterly to be beautiful. But I’d give anything short of life for it.”

“Not silly at all,” returned Dr. Strong emphatically. “On the contrary, that desire is rooted in the profoundest depths of sex.”

“And is the best excuse for art as a profession,” said the painter, smiling.

“Only tell me what to do,” she besought. “Gently,” said Dr. Strong. “It can’t be done in a day. And it will be a costly process.”

“That doesn’t matter. If money is all—”

“It isn’t all. It’s only a drop in the bucket. It will cost you dear in comfort, in indulgence, in ease, in enjoyment, in habit—”

“I’ll obey like a child.” Again her hands went tremulously out to him; then she covered her face with them and burst into the tears of nervous exhaustion.

“This is no place for me,” said the artist, and was about to escape by the door, when Mrs. Clyde blocked his departure.

“Ah, you are in here,” she said gayly. “I’d been wondering—Why, what’s the matter? What is it?”

“There has been an unfortunate blunder,” said Dr. Strong quickly. “I said some foolish things which Miss Ennis overheard—”

“No,” interrupted the painter. “The fault was mine—” And in the same breath Louise Ennis cried:—

“I didn’t overhear! I listened. I eavesdropped.”

“Are you quite mad, all of you?” demanded the hostess. “Won’t somebody tell me what has happened?”

“It’s true,” said the girl wildly; “every word they said. I am a mess.”

Mrs. Clyde’s arms went around the girl. Sex-loyalty raised its war signal flaring in her cheeks.

“Who said that?” she demanded, in a tone of which Dr. Strong observed afterward, “I never before heard a woman roar under her breath.”

“Never mind who said it,” retorted the girl. “It’s true anyway. It wasn’t meant to hurt me. It didn’t hurt me. He is going to cure me; Dr. Strong is.”

“Cure you, Louise? Of what?”

“Of ugliness. Of hideousness. Of being a mess.”

“But, my dear,” said the older woman softly, “you mustn’t take it to heart so, the idle word of some one who doesn’t know you at all.”

“You can’t understand,” retorted the other passionately. “You’ve always been pretty!”