"I don't mean, child, that you're ever not pretty."
"Thank you. I know exactly how pretty I am."
"Do you? How pretty do you think you are now?"
"Not half as pretty as Dora Nicholson. You know exactly how pretty she is."
"I do. And I know exactly how pretty she'll be in five years' time. That's the worst of those thin women with little, delicate, pink faces. You know the precise minute when a girl like Dora'll go off. You know the pinkness will begin to run when she's once past thirty. You can see the crows' feet coming, and you know exactly how far they'll have got by the time she's thirty-five. You know that when she's forty there'll be two little lines like thumb-nail marks beside her ears, just here, and you know that when she's forty-five the dear little lobes will begin to shrivel up, and that when she's fifty the corners of her mouth will collapse."
"And then?"
"Then, if you're a wise man you don't know any more."
"Poor little Dora. You are a brute, Wilfrid."
"I'm not a brute. I was going to say that the best of you, dear, is that I don't know how you'll look at fifty. I don't know how you'll look to-morrow—to-night. You're never the same for ten minutes together. When you get one of those abominable headaches you look perhaps as old as you are. You're twenty-seven, aren't you?"
"Yes."