"Oh, Caroline," cried the Marchesa, rising, "you are so splendidly, so gloriously young!" The girl laughed. "It is a misfortune, Marchesa, from which I am certain to recover."
"Oh," continued the woman, drinking in the girl from her dainty feet, incased in quaint Japanese sandals, to the delicate contour of her bosom, showing above the open collar of the robe. "If only one could be always young, then one could, indeed, be always beautiful; but each year is sold to us, as it goes out it takes with it some bit of our priceless treasure, like evil fairies, stealing sovereigns from a chest, piece by piece, until the treasure is wholly gone."
She paused, as though caught on the instant by some returning memory of a day long vanished, when she saw, reflected from a glass, on such a morning, a counterpart of this splendid picture, only that girl's hair was gold, and her eyes gray, but she was slim, too, and brilliantly colored and alluring.
Then she continued: "The bit taken seems a very little, a strand of hair, a touch of color, the almost imperceptible lessening of a perfect contour, but in the end we are hags."
"Then," replied the girl, smiling, "I beg that I may become, in the end, such a hag as the Marchesa Soderrelli."
"Child," said the woman, still speaking as though moved by the inspiration of that picture, "beg only for youth, in your prayers, as the Apostle would say it, unceasingly. If you should be given a wish by the fairies, or three wishes, let them all be youth. Women arriving at middle life adhere to the Christian religion upon the promise of a resurrection of the body. Were that promise wanting, we should be, to the last one, pagans."
"But, Marchesa," replied the girl, "old, wise men tell us that the mind is always young."
There was something adverse to this wisdom in the girl's soft voice; a voice low, lingering, peculiar to the deliberate peoples of the South.
The Marchesa made a depreciating gesture. "My dear," she said, "what man ever loved a woman for her mind! What Prince Charming ever rode down from his enchanted palace to wed a learned prig, doing calculus behind her spectacles! The sight would set the sides of every god in his sphere shaking. It is always the lily lass, the dainty maiden of red blood and dreams, the slim youngling of gloss and porcelain that the Prince takes up, after adventures, into his saddle. Every man born into this world is at heart a Greek. Learning, cleverness, and wisdom he may greatly, he may extravagantly, admire, but it is beauty only that he loves. He may deny this with a certain heat, with well-turned and tripping phrases, with specious arguments to the ear sound, but, believe me for a wise old woman, it is a seizure of unconscionable lying."
A soft hand put for a moment into that of the Marchesa, a wet cheek touched a moment to her face, brought her lecture abruptly to a close.