I loathed "the others" with a horrible detestation; but I said, after reflection: "Tell me about yourself. I know you are called Valerie from Dr. Deane. How old are you?" She pinned the bandage in front of my forehead. "Oh, I'm young enough," she answered with a laugh. "Three-and-twenty. And I'm five-foot-four, and I haven't a bad figure. But I haven't any good looks at all, at all." "Tell me," said I impatiently, "exactly how you do look. I must know." "I have a sallow complexion. Not very good skin. And a low forehead." "An excellent thing," said I. "But my eyebrows and hair run in straight parallel lines, so it isn't," she retorted. "It is very ugly. I have thin black hair." "Let me feel." "Certainly not. And my eyes are a sort of watery china blue and much too small. And my nose isn't a bad nose altogether, but it's fleshy. One of those nondescript, unaristocratic noses that always looks as if it has got a cold. My mouth is large--I am looking at myself in the glass--my my teeth are white. Yes, they are nice and white. But they are large and protrude--you know the French caricature of an Englishwoman's teeth. Really, now I consider the question, I am the image of the English _mees_ in a French comic paper." "I don't believe it," I declared. "It is true. I know I have a pretty voice--but that is all. It deceives blind people. They think I must be pretty too, and when they see me--_bon soir, la compagnie_! And I've such a thin, miserable face, coming to the chin in a point, like a kite. There! Have you a clear idea of me now?" "No," said I, "for I believe you are wilfully misrepresenting yourself. Besides, beauty does not depend upon features regular in themselves, but the way those features are put together." "Oh, mine are arranged in an amiable sort of way. I don't look cross." "You must look sweetness itself," said I. She sighed and said meditatively: "It is a great misfortune for a girl to be so desperately plain. The consciousness of it comes upon her like a cold shower-bath when she is out with other girls. Now there is my cousin----" "Which cousin?" "My Uncle Henry's daughter. Shall I tell you about her?" "I am not in the least interested in your cousin," I replied. She laughed, and the entrance of the nurse put an end to the conversation. Now I must make a confession. I was grievously disappointed. Her detailed description of herself as a sallow, ill-featured young woman awoke me with a shock from my dreams of a radiant goddess. It arrested my infatuation in mid-course. My dismay was painful. I began to pity her for being so unattractive. For the next day or two even her beautiful voice failed in its seduction.