Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/226

218 you're exactly as you were, the same young and pretty girl. . . . Well, my beauty, you never made a greater mistake in your life! . . . But I see you don't believe me, you grin when I tell you, you think your charms are going to live for ever. . . . Everything wears, child. . . . However, you won't believe it: I can see your eyes mocking me now. . . ."

Indeed, her eyes were laughing and the smouldering spark of mockery seemed to leap into flame. And, because he spoke like that, she laughed, a loud laugh with a shrill note which annoyed him, in which he heard mockery. . . because, after all, though she no longer resembled her old photographs, she had caught him badly.

"Just come here," he said, roughly.

"Why?"

"Just come here."

She went up to him, trembling.

He took hold of her, a little more roughly than he intended, took her between his knees, looked her in the face:

"What do you make up for?" he asked.

"I don't make up."

"Oh, you don't, don't you? Do you think I can't see it?"

"No, I don't make up."

"Then what's that?"

He pointed to her cheek.