The seventh shot — Inside the Classic

to enhance her naturally youthful appearance, she passed easily for a girl in her teens. Very small, very dainty, with the clear, ivory-white skin which keeps its freshness so well, big dark eyes, brown curls, and a very red, tiny, full mouth, she still made an enchanting ingénue and captivated every one who saw her.

To-day she was entirely charming in one of the innocently sophisticated frocks she particularly loved to wear—a creation of black and white, most daring in effect, though demurely simple in cut. Always pale by nature, she was doubly so now from fatigue and heat, yet she still looked young and lovely, and her smile had the irresistible and infectious quality of a child’s.

If at times her eye grew a bit cynical or her pretty mouth a trifle hard, such slips in self-control occurred seldom. As a rule she kept a rigid guard upon herself and her expressions, not only because an obviously ugly mood or reflection made her look older, but because, if permitted to become a habit, it would be perilously and permanently aging.

Kitty Legaye was too truly clever not to know that her one valuable asset, both as an actress and a woman, was her quality—or illusion—of youth. When she lost that, she shrewdly judged, she would lose everything. She was not a sufficiently brilliant actress to continue successfully in character work after her looks had gone. And so far as her personal and private life was concerned she had lived too selfishly to have made a very cozy human place for herself in the world.

Not that she was a disagreeable or an unkind woman; she could even be generous on occasion, and she was almost always pleasant to her associates; but the spirit of calculation which she strove so hard to keep out of her face had left its mark upon her life. She had few close friends, though she liked many persons and many persons liked her. She had long since drifted away from her own people, and she had never been willing to give up her independence for the sake of any man. So, in spite of a great number of admirers and a remarkably handsome salary, her existence seemed just a little barren and chilly sometimes.

We have said that she never had been willing to give up her independence. That had been true all her life until now. To-day she was considering just that proposition. Did she care enough, at last, to marry? Love—she had had no small measure of that all her life, for Kitty was by way of being temperamental; but marriage! That was another and a vastly more serious matter.

She looked almost wistfully across the table at Sibyl Merivale. For a moment she had an unaccountable impulse to confide in her. She wished she knew her well enough. She looked, Kitty thought, like the sort of girl who would understand about this sort of thing—loving enough to get married, and—and all that.

Sybil was as unlike Miss Legaye as she well could be. She was tall, and built strongly though slenderly, like a young Artemis, and her eyes were very clear and starry and blue. Her hair was of that rare and delicious shade known as _blonde cendrée_, and the silvery, ashen nimbus about her face made her brown eyebrows and lashes effective. Her skin was very fair, and her color came and went sensitively. She was not a beauty; her nose was decidedly _retroussé_, and her mouth too large. But she was unquestionably sweet and wholesome and attractive, and her lovely forehead and the splendid breadth between her eyes suggested both character and intelligence.

Kitty looked disapprovingly at the dust-colored linen dress she wore; it was far too close to the tint of her hair to be becoming. Blondes, thought Kitty, could wear almost any color on the face of the earth except—just that! However, she felt rather pleased than otherwise that Miss Merivale was not looking her best. When she appeared in public with another woman, she was well satisfied to have the other woman badly dressed. She herself never was.

Both women were honestly and healthily hungry, and talked very little until they were half through the trout. Then they met each other’s eyes and laughed a little.

“Thank goodness you don’t pretend not to have an appetite, like most girls!” said Miss Legaye. “I’m starved, and not a bit ashamed of it! Boned squab, after this, waiter, and romaine salad.”