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 line about it. But in full face it was not heavy, only quiet. Her mouth was full and colorless, unpainted, and her eyes were opaque as smoke. She met his gaze, remarking the icy blueness of his eyes (like a surgeon’s she thought) and looked at the marble again.

“I don’t know,” she answered slowly. Then: “It’s like me.”

“How like you?” he asked gravely.

She didn’t answer. Then she said: “Can I touch it?”

“If you like,” he replied, examining the line of her jaw, her firm brief nose. She made no move and he added: “Aren’t you going to touch it?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” she told him calmly. Gordon glanced ever his shoulder to where Mrs. Maurier pored volubly over something. Mr. Talliaferro yea’d her with restrained passion.

“Why is it like you?” he repeated.

She said irrelevantly: “Why hasn’t she anything here?” Her brown hand flashed slimly across the high unemphasis of the marble’s breast, and withdrew.

“You haven’t much there yourself.” She met his steady gaze steadily. “Why should it have anything there?” he asked.

“You're right,” she agreed with the judicial complaisance of an equal. “I see now. Of course she shouldn’t. I didn’t quite—quite get it for a moment.”

Gordon examined with growing interest her flat breast and belly, her boy’s body which the poise of it and the thinness of her arms belied. Sexless, yet somehow vaguely troubling. Perhaps just young, like a calf or a colt. “How old are you?” he asked abruptly.

“Eighteen, if it’s any of your business,” she replied without rancor, staring at the marble. Suddenly she looked up at him