“I cannot find it in her conversation,” he said.
“Nor can I, nor can anyone.”
“She is full of personal fascination, of course.”
“You mean because of her personal beauty?”
“No, it’s more than that, I think. It’s the woman herself. She is suggestive somehow. She makes one’s imagination work. Of course she is beautiful.”
“And she thinks that is everything. She would part with her voice, her intelligence—she is very intelligent in the quick, frivolous fashion that is necessary for London—that personal fascination you speak of, everything rather than her white-rose complexion and the wave in her hair.”
“Really, really?”
“Yes. She thinks the outside everything. She believes the world is governed, love is won and held, happiness is gained and kept by the husk of things. She told me only to-night that it is her face which sings to us all, not her voice; that were she to sing as well and be an ugly woman we should not care to listen to her.”
“H’m! H’m!”
“Absurd, isn’t it?”