“She was always beautiful,” said her companion, quietly, “to those who had eyes to see. But she has learnt to use her beauty. She had first to learn that she possessed it. That took her a long time.” Again he smiled his odd little smile of reminiscence. “They are quite right when they say that she was shy. There are many people in the world, madame, who could be beautiful if they knew how. Beauty, the truest beauty, is an art. A subtle blend of many powers, mental and moral, which result in a mastery of the physical qualities. A knowledge of them, a perfect handling, a moulding of them to the ideal of the spirit. Do you remember what your critic Pater, says of _Mona Lisa_? It is a well-known passage, but it expresses what I am trying to say so poorly, so inadequately.” Mrs. Dakin shook her head. “I’m a very ignorant person,” she said, with an embarrassed laugh. “He is speaking of the portrait--which is lovely, according to the spirit rather than the flesh, and he says, ‘_It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries, and exquisite passions._’” Mrs. Dakin wrinkled her forehead. The last words shocked her a little. Her plea of ignorance was a true one in every sense of the word. It was the plea of a woman who had passed most of her life with ordinary conventional people, as oblivious to the complexities of human life as to the world of ideas in art, in philosophy, in all the realms invaded by human thought and emotion. If her existence was troubled, it was with the discontent of a child who cries for the moon which it regards as a pretty material plaything, rather than the trouble of a woman to whom the moon is a symbol of the rare, the exquisite things of life, which she weeps to find beyond her reach. Yet her next remark pleased her companion. “I think what you said about the rose describes her much better,” she ventured, rather timidly. He smiled. “You’re quite right. I see you understand our sweet Anne Page. She doesn’t belong to the _Mona Lisa_ type. She’s made up of all the beautiful natural things; of the sunlight and the roses, and the dew. _Tiens!_ Don’t say I’m ignorant of your poets. One of them has come rather near it when he says, ‘_And beauty born of murmuring sound has passed into her face._’” Mrs. Dakin had never heard the lines before, and hurriedly wondered how she could find them. She felt flattered, shy, and troubled at the same moment. It was rather a fearful joy to be talked to by this Frenchman, who was evidently so used to what she called “clever” people, that he quite naturally assumed her comprehension of his language. She wondered who _Mona Lisa_ was, and half thought of asking Harry. It occurred to her that Harry read a great deal; that his study was lined with books into which she had never thought of looking. He never talked to her about them.