Jasper had been absorbed in the plot and had not noticed Jane, but

Yarnall for several minutes had been leaning forward, his hands

tightened on the arms of his chair. The instant Jasper stopped he held

up his hand.

"Quiet, Jane," he said softly as a man might speak to a plunging

horse. "Steady!"

Jane got to her feet. She was very white. She put up her hand and

pressed the back of it against her forehead and from under this hand

she looked at the two men with eyes of such astonished pain and beauty

as they could never forget.

"Yes," she said presently; "that's something I could do."

At once Jasper hastened to retrieve his error. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I've

been horribly clumsy. Do forgive me. Do let me explain. I didn't mean

that you were a wild--"

She let the hand fall and held it up to stop his speech. "I'm not

taking offense, Mr. Morena," she said. "You say you arrange plays and

that you have been seeking for some one to play that girl, that

lioness-girl who wasn't rightly tamed, though the man had done his

worst to break her?"

Jasper nodded with a puzzled, anxious air. For all his skill and

subtlety, he could not interpret her tone.

"And you think I'm beautiful?"

"My dear child, I know you are," said he. "You try to disguise it. And

I know that in many other ways you disguise yourself. I think you make

a great mistake. Your work is hard and rough--"

She smiled. "I'm not complaining of my work," she said. "It's rough

and so am I. Oh, yes, I'm real, true rough. I was born to roughness

and raised to it. I'm not anything I don't seem, Mr. Morena. I've had

rough travel all my days, only--only--" She sat down again, twisting

her hands painfully in her apron and bending her face down from the

sight of the two men. The line of her long, bent neck was a beautiful

thing to see. She spoke low and rapidly, holding down her emotion,

though she could not control all the exquisite modulations of her

voice. "There's only one part of my travel that I want to forget and

that's the one smooth bit. And it's hateful to me and you've been

reminding me of it. I must tell you now that I'd rather be burnt by a

white-hot iron"--here she gave him a wide and horrified look like a

child who speaks of some dreadful remembered punishment--"than do that

thing you've asked of me. I hate everything you've been telling me

about. I don't want to be beautiful. I don't want any one to be

telling me such things. I don't want to be any different from what I

am now. This is my real self. It is. I hate beauty. I hate it. I'm not

good enough to love it. Beauty and learning and--and music--"




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