Matilda sat stroking her cheek and gazing at him. She cocked her head on one side and said: "Glad you're better, but I don't like men with beards. Napoleon didn't have a beard." "How do you know?" "I bought a book about him for a penny. I like Josephine." "I don't know much about it, but I always felt sorry for her." "She gave as good as she got. That's why I like her. . . . I had a part to do to-night." "A long part?" "No. I just had to say to uncle, 'Won't you give her another chance?' His erring wife had just returned to him." "Did you do it well?" "No. Uncle said no one who wasn't at the back of the stage could hear me." "Oh! Did you like it?" "Yes. I felt funny like." Mr. Mole coughed. Matilda stopped. "What did I say?" "Funny like." "Don't people say that?" "It is unusual." "Oh!" "I wasn't a bit nervous. Uncle says that's a bad sign. He says I looked all right, though I'm sure I was an object with that paint stuff on my face and the red all in the wrong place. Aunt wouldn't let me do it myself. . . . You will cut your beard off?" "I don't know. I might like it." She handed him a mirror, and mischief danced in her eyes as she watched his disconcerted expression. "Bit of a surprise, eh?" He could find nothing to say. Impossible for him to lay the mirror down. For years he had accepted a certain idea of his personal appearance--ruddy, heavy-jowled, with a twinkle behind spectacles surmounted by a passably high forehead that was furrowed by the lines of a frown almost deliberately cultivated for the purposes of inspiring terror in small boys delinquent. Now, in the sharpened receptivity of his issue from unconsciousness, his impression was one of roundness, round face, round eyes, round brow, round head (balder than he had thought)--all accentuated by the novelty of his beard, that was gray, almost white. Age and roundness. Fearful of meeting Matilda's gaze, he went on staring into the mirror. Her youth, the fun bubbling up in her, reproached him, made him feel defenceless against her, and, though he delighted in her presence, he was resentful. She had so many precious qualities to which he could not respond. "I 'spect I must go now," she said. "Yes. I'm rather tired." She took the mirror from him, patted his hand, and soothed him, saying: "You'll soon be up and doing, and then you'll begin to teach me, won't you?" "How would it be if you came and read to me every evening before the play? Then we could begin at once." "Shall I?" She warmed to the plan. "What shall I read?" "You might read your book about Napoleon." "Oh! Lovely!" Mrs. Copas returned to give him his medicine and to tuck him up for the night. "What day is it?" he asked. "Saturday." "Are there any letters for me?" He remembered then that there could be none, that he was no longer his old self, that an explosion in his affairs had hurled him out of his old habitual existence and left him bruised and broken among strangers.