She was all a-flutter again, though, as was her habit, she covered it up with a smile. "Very good friends!" she returned, with conviction, and she put her hand in his, and let it linger there. "I have always lived reserved and to myself," she added thoughtfully. "You may think it strange, but I have never had a friend before—not even a woman friend."
"I can well understand your shrinking away from people. No doubt most people would jar on you."
"It would hurt me if I thought that. I should not like to despise anybody. I should have loved to have friends: only I have never had the gift of making them. Sometimes I am thankful that I am not brilliant—I might so easily have become unendurable and full of self-conceit."
"Ah, you are something better than brilliant," he exclaimed. "It needs an exceptional spirit to appreciate you. You are so much out of the ordinary in every way, in looks——"
"No, no," she interrupted in protest. "I have no looks. I have no illusions about that."
"Look at your own portrait," he insisted. "I say it is the kind of beauty it needs a gift to appreciate. In beauty—as in everything else—the crowd runs after the obvious and the commonplace."
"You are the first that ever thought I possessed good looks. You have given them to me."
"I have not even done you justice. I have omitted more than I have suggested. My sister thinks you are beautiful; all my artist friends who have seen the picture share her opinion."
She was silent, almost distressed; she could not meet his gaze, but turned her eyes away.
"It gave me pleasure to hear you appreciated," he continued. "You are above conventional compliments. I withdraw what I said before. You are not like other women."