She sprang to her feet and threw her arms above her head. New life seemed to have been poured into her veins, and it coursed through them like quicksilver; she felt _young_ for the first time in the twenty-four centuries of her life. She dropped her arms and closed her hand slowly; the world was in the palm. She smiled and let her head drop back. She moved it slowly on the pivot of her throat. Her eyes met the glass. The cry of horror which burst from her lips rang through the room. For this girl had lived so long and so consistently in her imagination that it was rarely she remembered she was not a beautiful woman. During the past hours she had slowly grasped the fact that, as with the stroke of a magician’s wand, her dream-estates had been hardened from shadow into substance; it had not occurred to her that the gift most coveted was the one gift withheld. She sank in a heap on the bed, all spirit and hope gone out of her. For many minutes she remained motionless. Then she slowly straightened herself until she was erect once more, and in her face grew a look of hope fighting down doubt. In a moment hope triumphed, then gave way to determination, which in turn yielded to defiance. She sprang forward and with her clenched hand shattered her mirror into a star with a thousand points. “I _will_ be beautiful!” she cried aloud, “and I will never look into a glass again until I am.” * * * * * CHAPTER VII. A HEROINE IN TRAINING. The thirty or forty thousand dollars over John Suydam’s million had been left to Bessie. She immediately bought a charming house on St. Mark’s Avenue—it did not occur to her to leave her beloved Brooklyn—and Hermia furnished it for her and told her that she would educate the children. Hermia did not divide her fortune with her sister. She kept her hundred thousands, not because gold had made her niggardly, but because she wanted the power that a fortune gives. The old Suydam house was one of the largest of its kind in New York. Exteriorly it was of red brick with brown-stone trimmings, and about the lower window was a heavy iron balcony. Beneath the window was a square of lawn the size of a small kitchen table, which was carefully protected by a high, spiked iron railing. Hermia put the house at once in the hands of a famous designer and decorator, but allowed him no license. Her orders were to be followed to the letter. The large, single drawing-room was to be Babylonian. The library just behind, and the dining-room in the extension were to look like the rooms of a feudal castle. The large hall should suggest a cathedral. Above, her boudoir and bed-room was to be a scene from the Arabian Nights. A conservatory, to be built at the back of the house, would be a jungle of India.