"Neither nineteen nor twenty."

"So much! Then I really think she is the youngest-looking girl I ever met at that age. She looks more like sweet seventeen."

"You think her pretty?"

"Rather more than that: she reminds me always of 'Maggie Lauder:'

"'Her face is as the summer cloud, whereon
The dawning sun delights to rest his rays.'

And, again, surely Apollo loves to

"Play at hide-and-seek amid her golden hairs.'"

"Dorian, don't—don't make her unhappy," says Clarissa, blushing hotly.

"I wish I could," says Dorian. He laughs as he speaks, but there is truth hidden in his jesting tone. Oh, to make her feel something,—that cold indifferent child!

"No, no. I am in earnest," says Clarissa, a little anxiously. "Don't pay her too much attention, if you don't mean it."