Joy went to look at herself in the mirror. Her beauty was not tangible, and she had never made an inventory of its assets and liabilities. It was not so much her hair, which had started to be light brown and rippled into purest gold, the inimitable shade that less fortunately endowed women are prone to be catty about, or her complexion which needed none of Sarah’s artifices, as it was her eyes and the expression they lent her face. It seemed as if her name had marked her; her eyes, the colour of summer skies with the laughter of the sun caught up in them, bathed her face in radiance. Most pretty girls never tire of admiring what the mirror gives back to them, but Joy had not had enough admiration in her life to assure her of the necessary self-appreciation. She put an experimental hand on Sarah’s tools. There was blue shadowing to go beneath the eyes, and sticky black stuff to make one’s lashes look like an advertisement of Lash-Brow-ing—— “Don’t put on any of that stuff now!” said Jerry. “Wait till evening, and I’ll help you.” Joy began to comb her hair, singing lightly one of the songs the orchestra had played the evening before. “I was so _young_—you were so _beautiful_— I knew you couldn’t be true-ue— Each time I looked at you my heart grew sad— ’Twas then I realized why men go mad— You made me give you all the love I had—” She stopped, suddenly aware of the other girl’s riveted attention. Jerry’s careless, carefree attitude had slipped away entirely, as she stood listening, her eyes lancets of concentration, her upper teeth pulling in her under lip. “Where have you studied singing?” she demanded, her voice an imperative flick. “Just a little—at the school I went to,” said Joy. “Why, what’s the matter? I——” “Your mother must have sung, then, or someone in the family. It’s the sort of voice that sounds as if it had been bred in the family for generations—it has, hasn’t it?” “Yes, and gotten a little stale in being handed down,” said Joy uncertainly. She was not sure whether Jerry was making fun of her or not. People who thought they could sing were awful bores, and she had no intention of being that sort of a bore. “I mean it. How long since you’ve done anything with it?” “I’ve never done anything with it.” Joy was a little impatient by this time. “My teacher was the kind who said ‘Can anything improve upon God?’ So you can get an idea of how hard I worked.” “Sing something—don’t muffle it up the way you were doing.” Sarah created a hiatus by stumbling in at that moment. She seemed to be fairly awake by this time, but cross and unlike her usual self. On Jerry’s good-natured “Brace up, old girl,” she turned and almost snarled; “Just because I haven’t got an asbestos lining like _some people_!” “That’s your error, old dear,” Jerry retorted. “Stepped through your hat, a while back; guess I’ll take a reef in it while you slap on your kalsomine.”