"Well, Mr. Pierce, what's the matter?"

"Mr. Pierce!" he said, almost savagely.

"Yes, of the English Embassy in Rome, rising young diplomat and full of
early Eighty yearns--"

"How the deuce can you be as you are and yet sing as you do?" he
exclaimed, turning on her. "You say you care for nothing but the outside
of things--the husk, the shell, the surface. You think men care for
nothing else. Yet when you sing you--you--"

"What do I do?"

"It's as if another woman than you were singing in you--a woman totally
unlike you, a woman who believes in, and loves, the real beauty which you
care nothing about."

"The real beauty that rules the world is lodged in the epidermis," she
said, opening her fan and smiling slowly. "If this"--she touched her
face--"were to be changed into--shall we say a Filberte countenance?"

"Oh!" he exclaimed.

"There! You see, directly I put the matter before you, you have to agree
with me!"

"No one could sing like you and have a face like a silly sheep."