And she departed, the smile still on her charming face, but the new seriousness beneath it. As she had anticipated, she found Stanley Baird waiting for her in the drawing-room of the apartment. Being by habit much interested in his own emotions and not at all in the emotions of others, he saw only the healthful radiance the sharp October air had put into her cheeks and eyes. Certainly, to look at Mildred Gower was to get no impression of lack of health and strength. Her glance wavered a little at sight of him, then the expression of firmness came back.
"You look like that picture you gave me a long time ago," said he. "Do you remember it?"
She did not.
"It has a—different expression," he went on. "I don't think I'd have noticed it but for Keith. I happened to show it to him one day, and he stared at it in that way he has—you know?"
"Yes, I know," said Mildred. She was seeing those uncanny, brilliant, penetrating eyes, in such startling contrast to the calm, lifeless coloring and classic chiseling of features.
"And after a while he said, 'So, THAT'S Miss Stevens!' And I asked him what he meant, and he took one of your later photos and put the two side by side. To my notion the later was a lot the more attractive, for the face was rounder and softer and didn't have a certain kind of—well, hardness, as if you had a will and could ride rough shod. Not that you look so frightfully unattractive."
"I remember the picture," interrupted Mildred. "It was taken when I was twenty—just after an illness."
"The face WAS thin," said Stanley. "Keith called it a 'give away.'"
"I'd like to see it," said Mildred.
"I'll try to find it. But I'm afraid I can't. I haven't seen it since I showed it to Keith, and when I hunted for it the other day, it didn't turn up. I've changed valets several times in the last six months—"