"For as passion is in the soul, so is beauty in the heart, and hearts
have differing vision. That was Loveday's desire. Translate this paltry
thing into terms of other ambitions--and where is any one of us then?
Unless, indeed, we are so bloodless, so without imagination, that we
cannot but be content with our lot just as it is."

Miss Le Pettit, who had never seen reason for anything but contentment,
and looked upon it as a Christian virtue, demurred with:--

"The whole affair is so ridiculously out of proportion."

Mr. Constantine glanced, with admiration in his gallant though elderly
eye, over Miss Le Pettit's figure as she lay back in the gilt chair;
glanced from her high, polished forehead, round which the smooth
chestnut hair showed as gleaming, from her parted red lips and bare,
sloping shoulders to her tiny waist and the outward spring beneath it of
the clouded tulle that lapped in a dozen baby waves over the globe of
her swelling crinoline.

"When I was a young man," he said, "the ladies went about in little
robes, such as you would not wear nowadays as a shift. We thought them
pretty then, and thought none the worse of them because they made the
women look more or less as God saw fit to make 'em. Yet now we think you
equally lovely as you float about the world like monstrous beautiful
bubbles, so that a man must adore at a distance and only guess at
Paradise in a gust of wind.... Yet to the next generation, believe me or
not as you like, your garb will seem too preposterous to be true, and a
generation later Time will pay you the unkindest cut of all--you will be
picturesque, and your grand-daughters will revive you--for fancy dress.
Proportion, ma'am, is nothing in the world but fashion."