glad of the beauty for its own sake. Eskew says
this is a wicked town. It may be--I don't know.
He says it's badly built; perhaps it is; but it doesn't
seem to me that it's ugly in itself. I don't know
what its real self is, because it wears so many
aspects. God keeps painting it all the time, and
never shows me twice the same picture; not even
two snowfalls are just alike, nor the days that
follow them; no more than two misty sunsets are
alike--for the color and even the form of the
town you call ugly are a matter of the season of
the year and of the time of day and of the light
and air. The ugly town is like an endless gallery
which you can walk through, from year-end to
year-end, never seeing the same canvas twice, no
matter how much you may want to--and there's
the pathos of it. Isn't it the same with people
with the characters of all of us, just as it is with
our faces? No face remains the same for two
successive days--"

"It don't?" Colonel Flitcroft interrupted, with
an explosive and rueful incredulity. "Well, I'd
like to--" Second thoughts came to him almost
immediately, and, as much out of gallantry as
through discretion, fearing that he might be taken
as thinking of one at home, he relapsed into
silence.

Not so with the others. It was as if a