"Why--no," he drawled. "Under all existing circumstances I should
think I was complimenting you pretty considerably by rating you only
as a fool."

"Eh?" jumped Barton again.

"U-m-m," mused the Older Man thoughtfully. "Now believe me, Barton,
once and for all, there 's no such thing as a 'hopelessly plain
woman'! Every woman, I tell you, is beautiful concerning the thing
that she's most interested in! And a man's an everlasting dullard who
can't ferret out what that interest is and summon its illuminating
miracle into an otherwise indifferent face--"

"Is that so?" sniffed Barton.

Lazily the Older Man struggled to his feet and stretched his arms
till his bones began to crack.

"Bah! What's beauty, anyway," he complained, "except just a question
of where Nature has concentrated her supreme forces--in outgrowing
energy, which is beauty; or ingrowing energy, which is brains! Now I
like a little good looks as well as anybody," he confided, still
yawning, "but when I see a woman living altogether on the outside of
her face I don't reckon too positively on there being anything very
exciting going on inside that face. So by the same token, when I see a
woman who isn't squandering any centric fires at all on the contour of
her nose or the arch of her eyebrows or the flesh-tints of her cheeks,
it surely does pique my curiosity to know just what wonderful
consuming energy she is busy about.