"Why, that is my name—what else should you call me?" she returned, evidently with surprise.
"It is a pretty name, and so sweet on the lips that I should like to be repeating it continually," I answered. "But it is only right that you should have a pretty name, because—well, if I may tell you, because you are so very beautiful."
"Yes; but is that strange—are not all people beautiful?"
I thought of certain London types, especially among the "criminal classes," and of the old women with withered, simian faces and wearing shawls, slinking in or out of public-houses at the street corners; and also of some people of a better class I had known personally—some even in the House of Commons; and I felt that I could not agree with her, much as I wished to do so, without straining my conscience.
"At all events, you will allow," said I, evading the question, "that there are degrees of beauty, just as there are degrees of light. You may be able to see to work in this light, but it is very faint compared with the noonday light when the sun is shining."
"Oh, there is not so great a difference between people as that," she replied, with the air of a philosopher. "There are different kinds of beauty, I allow, and some people seem more beautiful to us than others, but that is only because we love them more. The best loved are always the most beautiful."
This seemed to reverse the usual idea, that the more beautiful the person is the more he or she gets loved. However, I was not going to disagree with her any more, and only said: "How sweetly you talk, Yoletta; you are as wise as you are beautiful. I could wish for no greater pleasure than to sit here listening to you the whole evening."
"Ah, then, I am sorry I must leave you now," she answered, with a bright smile which made me think that perhaps my little speech had pleased her.
"Do you wonder why I smile?" she added, as if able to read my thoughts. "It is because I have often heard words like yours from one who is waiting for me now."
This speech caused me a jealous pang. But for a few moments after speaking, she continued regarding me with that bright, spiritual smile on her lips; then it faded, and her face clouded and her glance fell. I did not ask her to tell me, nor did I ask myself, the reason of that change; and afterwards how often I noticed that same change in her, and in the others too—that sudden silence and clouding of the face, such as may be seen in one who freely expresses himself to a person who cannot hear, and then, all at once but too late, remembers the other's infirmity.