A wonderful artist, the Doctor. For a creature—a person—who was insensitive to the differences in human faces, he could follow a pattern perfectly. Feature by feature, they were as before. Size and shape of forehead, dip of hairline, width of cheeks and height of cheekbones, shape and color of eyes, contour of nose and lips and chin—nothing in the two faces had been changed. Nothing at all.
Nothing, that is, but the overall effect. Nothing but the fact that where before she had been plain, now she was beautiful.
I should have realized the possibility, she thought. Sometimes you see two sisters, or mother and daughter, with the same features, the faces as alike as if they had been cast from the same mold—and yet one is ugly and the other beautiful. Many artists can copy features, but few can copy with perfect exactness either beauty or ugliness. The Doctor slipped up a little. Despite my warning, he's done too well by me.
And not well enough by Fred. Fred isn't handsome any more. Not ugly really—his face is stronger and more interesting than it was. But now I'm the good-looking one of the family. And he won't be able to take it. This is the end for us.
Fred was grinning at her. He said, "Wow, what a wife I've got! Just look at you! Do you mind if I drool a bit?"
She said uncertainly, "Fred, dear, I'm sorry."
"For what? For his giving you more than you bargained for—and me less? It's all in the family!"
"You don't have to pretend, Fred. I know how you feel."
"You don't know a thing. I asked him to make you beautiful. I wasn't sure he could, but I asked him anyway. And he said he'd try."