“I should feel as if a part of my personality had been lopped off.” “On the contrary, you’d give your personality its first chance to develop itself. If you really had a hard masculine face—the kind that goes with authentic masculoid characteristics—I wouldn’t say a word. I’d not be interested enough. But your type of beauty—real beauty—is the sort to express itself through clothes. Do you really hate beautiful and expressive gowns?” she demanded. “Hate the sight of them on other women?” “Oh, I like to look at them well enough. And I see at once if details are not right. I fancy I have what an old Frenchman I once knew called ‘le sentiment de la toilette.’ But all that is merely the same thing as knowing a good picture from a bad. I was dragged through all the picture galleries in Europe, and I lived in Paris off and on, where the women are the best dressed in the world. I appreciated them the more because I lived so much in French provincial towns, where the women are certainly the worst dressed in the world. And my mother had lovely things when I was little, and always managed to look better in old rags made over than many that spent thousands a year. But I never longed for things myself—never gave it a thought.” “Because you had censored your mind so thoroughly. Don’t you really think that if you hadn’t—for reasons best known to yourself—adopted the rôle of pseudo-boy so young, you’d have been as feminine in all ways as other girls?” Gita, quite unconscious of Elsie’s delicate probing into her past, answered obstinately: “Never thought about it. Or if I had I’d have been glad of another excuse to spend as little as possible on myself. We were frightfully poor, and even in San Francisco, where, for a time, we thought the worst of our troubles were over, we just about made both ends meet. At least we couldn’t save. If I’d been keen to dress like the other girls we’d have been in debt up to our necks.” Topper, who had received instructions to keep out of the room except when he was serving, had made his final exit some time since, but the girls lingered on with their coffee and cigarettes. Elsie made a curious zigzagging movement along the table with a spoon, denting the cloth; here and there she made an upward curve or straight mark as irregular in height as the crooked line; then, suddenly, she broke off, skipped an inch, and drew a high firm object that looked not unlike a barred gate. “What on earth are you doing?” asked Gita curiously.