"How many times do you want me to say it?" he said.
"But how beautiful?" she pursued. "Like a picture in the National Gallery? Or like one of those actresses? Now isn't that a queer thing? I'm all for art as a general thing, but I'd much rather be like an actress. Tell me, which am I like?"
"You're like both. That's where you score."
She caught her breath with a sob. "You're not laughing at me?"
"Get up on your chair and look in the glass over the mantelpiece."
She stepped up, and with a flush and a raising of the chin as if she were doing something much more radical than looking in a mirror, as if, indeed, she were stripping herself quite naked, she faced her image.
"You've never looked at yourself before," said the old man.
"'Deed I have," she snapped. "How do you think I put my hat on straight?"
"It never is," he retorted, and repeated grimly and exultingly, "You've never looked at yourself before."
She looked obliquely at her reflection and ran her hands ashamedly up and down her body, and tried for a word and failed.