Genius takes a century or more to become recognised,--but Beauty illumines this mortal scene as swiftly as a flash-light. Brief it may be, but none the less brilliant and blinding; and men who are for the most part themselves unintelligent and care next to nothing for intellectuality, go down like beaten curs under the spell of physical loveliness, when it is united to a dominating consciousness of charm. Consciousness of charm is a powerful magnet. A woman may be beautiful, but if she is of a nervous or retiring disposition and sits awkwardly in the background twiddling her thumbs she is never a success. She must know her own power, and, knowing it, must exercise it. “Old” Diana May had failed to learn this lesson in the days of her girlhood,--she had believed, with quite a touching filial faith, in the pious and excessively hypocritical twaddle her father talked, about the fascination of “modest, pretty girls, who were unconscious of their beauty”--with the result that she had seen him, with other men, avoid such “modest, pretty girls” altogether, and pay devoted court to _im_modest, “loud” and impertinent women, who asserted their “made-up” good looks with a frank boldness which “drew” the men on like a shoal of herrings in a net, and left the “modest, pretty girls” out in the cold. “Old” Diana had, by devotion to duty and constancy in love, missed all her chances,--but the “young” Diana, albeit “of mature years,” knew better now than to “miss” anything. She was mistress of her own situation, so completely that the hackneyed expression of “all London at her feet” for once proclaimed a literal truth. London is, on the whole, very ready to have something to worship,--it is easily led into a “craze.” It is a sort of Caliban among cities,--a monster that capers in drink and curses in pain, having, as Shakespeare says of his uncouth creation: “A forward voice to speak well of his friend,” and a “backward voice to utter foul speeches and detract.” But for once London was unanimous in giving its verdict for Diana May as the most beautiful creature it had ever seen. Photographers, cinema-producers, dressmakers, tailors, jewellers besieged her; she was like the lady of the Breton legend, who lived at the top of a brazen tower, too smooth and polished for anyone to climb it, or for any ladder to be supported against it, and whose face at the window drove all beholders mad with longing for the unattainable. One society versifier made a spurt of fame for himself by describing her as “a maiden goddess moulded from a dream,” whereat other society versifiers were jealous, and made a little commotion in the press by way of advertisement. But Diana herself, the centre of all the stir, showed no sign of either knowing or appreciating the social excitement concerning her, and her complete indifference only made her more desirable in the eyes of her ever-increasing crowd of admirers.