"I think she's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. She doesn't know it. If she did, she'd probably wave her hair and put on strange chiffons, what Charlotte calls dewdads. She'd have to be the cleverest woman on earth to resist them. And because she's probably never been an inch out of this country neighborhood, she'd rig herself up--Charlotte again!--in the things the girls like round here. But she either doesn't know her power or she doesn't care." "I'm inclined to think," said Raven slowly, "she never has looked at herself in that way. It has brought her things she doesn't want, things that made her suffer. And she's worked so hard trying to manage the whole business--life and her sufferings--she hasn't had time to lay much stress on her looks." "It's all so strange," said Nan, as if the barriers were down and she wanted to indicate something hardly clear to herself. "You see, she isn't merely beautiful. Most of us look like what we are. We're rather nice looking, like me, or we're plain. But she 'takes back,' as Charlotte would say. She reminds you of things, pictures, and music, and dead queens--isn't there a verse about 'queens that died young and fair'?--and--O heavens, Rookie! I can't say it--but all the old hungers and happinesses, the whole business." "I wonder," said Raven impetuously, "if you think she's got any mind at all. Or whether it's nothing but line and color?" Nan shook her head. "She's got something better than a mind. She has a faithful heart. And if a man--a man I cared about--got bewitched by her, I'd tell him to snatch her up and run off with her, and even if he found she was hollow inside, he'd have had a minute worth living for, and he could take his punishment and say 'twas none too much." "You'd tell him!" Raven suggested, smiling at her heat and yet moved by it. "You weren't going to fetter your man by telling him anything." "No," said Nan, returned to her composure, which was of a careless sort, "I shouldn't, really. I'd hope though. I'd allow myself to hope he'd snatch her away from that queer devil's darning needle she's married to, and buy her a divorce and marry her." "You would, indeed! Then you don't know love, my Nan, for you don't know jealousy. And with a mystery woman like that, wouldn't the man be forever wondering what's behind that smile of hers? Tenney wonders. It isn't that flashy fellow at the prayer-meeting that makes him wonder. It's the woman herself. Yet she's simplicity itself--she's truth--but no, Nan, you don't know jealousy." "Don't I?" said Nan, unperturbed. "You're mighty clever, aren't you, Rookie? But I tell you again I'd rather leave my man to live his life as he wants it than live it with him. Now"--she threw off the moment as if she had permanently done with it--"now, I went to see her this morning." "You did? What for?" "It was so horrible last night," said Nan. "Hideous! There was that creature sitting there beside her, that perfumery man." "Perfumery?"