presenting the very gestures and appearance of her aunt, she regarded
him under lowered eyelids with an expression of faintly supercilious
approval.

His smile at once thanked and answered her.

"But it's an abominable look," she exclaimed. "The look of an old, old,
painted woman, vain, ridiculous."

He stared at her in amazement. "How absurd!" he protested. "Why, it's
_you_; and you're certainly not old or painted nor unduly vain, and no
one could say you were ridiculous."

"And you want me to look like that?" she asked.

"It's--it's so _you_," he said shyly.

"But, just suppose," she cried, "that I went on looking like that after
I'd grown old and ugly. Think how hateful it would be to see a hideous
old woman posturing and pretending and making eyes. And, you see, if
one gets a habit, it's so hard to get rid of it. Think of me at
seventy, all painted and powdered, trying to seem as if I hadn't
altered and really believing that I hadn't."

He laughed that pleasant, kind laugh of his which had been one of the
first things in him that had so attracted her.

"Oh! I'll chance the future," he said. "Besides if--if it could ever
happen that--that your growing old came to me gradually, that I should
be seeing you every day, I mean, I shouldn't notice it. I should be old