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 “You have studied that pose?” he said.

“Would you have a woman neglect an obvious duty to herself?”

“You are frank.”

“Why should I not be? Nature has given the lion its strength, the cat its claws, the bird its talons and beak. For nothing, think you, or mere accident?”

“And woman her beauty,” he added.

“It is something out of the universal waste. You do not deny that beauty is power?”

“No.”

“You think me rather good-looking?”

“I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world. I think there never was such a woman as you.”

“Perhaps you’re right—though not exactly in that sense. Yet, after all, what is has been, and what has been will be again. There is nothing new under the sun.”

“Beauty is always new,” he said.

“A variation of the universal octave,” and by way of illustration she ran her fingers lightly over the keys.

“It is an abiding joy,” he said.

“Not always.”