For pain and time, which trace deep lines and write a story on a human
face, have a strangely different effect on one face and another. The face
that is only fair, even very fair, they mar and flaw; but to the face whose
beauty is the harmony between that which speaks from within and the form
through which it speaks, power is added by all that causes the outer man to
bear more deeply the impress of the inner. The pretty woman fades with the
roses on her cheeks, and the girlhood that lasts an hour; the beautiful
woman finds her fullness of bloom only when a past has written itself on
her, and her power is then most irresistible when it seems going.

From under their half-closed lids the keen eyes looked down at her. Her
shoulders were bent; for a moment the little figure had forgotten its
queenly bearing, and drooped wearily; the wide, dark eyes watched the fire
very softly.

It certainly was not in her power to resist him, nor any strength in her
that made his own at that moment grow soft as he looked at her.

He touched one little hand that rested on her knee.

"Poor little thing!" he said; "you are only a child."

She did not draw her hand away from his, and looked up at him.

"You are very tired?"

"Yes."

She looked into his eyes as a little child might whom a long day's play had
saddened.