eyes or the pink of their cheeks or the sheen of their hair--runs a mighty big risk of being rated as just one of two things, a sensualist or a fool." "Are you trying to insult me?" demanded the Younger Man furiously. Freakishly the Older Man twisted his thin-lipped mouth and one glowering eyebrow into a surprisingly sudden and irresistible smile. "Why--no," he drawled. "Under all existing circumstances I should think I was complimenting you pretty considerably by rating you only as a fool." "Eh?" jumped Barton again. "U-m-m," mused the Older Man thoughtfully. "Now believe me, Barton, once and for all, there 's no such thing as a 'hopelessly plain woman'! Every woman, I tell you, is beautiful concerning the thing that she's most interested in! And a man's an everlasting dullard who can't ferret out what that interest is and summon its illuminating miracle into an otherwise indifferent face--" "Is that so?" sniffed Barton. Lazily the Older Man struggled to his feet and stretched his arms till his bones began to crack. "Bah! What's beauty, anyway," he complained, "except just a question of where Nature has concentrated her supreme forces--in outgrowing energy, which is beauty; or ingrowing energy, which is brains! Now I like a little good looks as well as anybody," he confided, still yawning, "but when I see a woman living altogether on the outside of her face I don't reckon too positively on there being anything very exciting going on inside that face. So by the same token, when I see a woman who isn't squandering any centric fires at all on the contour of her nose or the arch of her eyebrows or the flesh-tints of her cheeks, it surely does pique my curiosity to know just what wonderful consuming energy she is busy about. "A face isn't meant to be a living-room, anyway, Barton, but just a piazza where the seething, preoccupied soul can dash out now and then to bask in the breeze and refreshment of sympathy and appreciation. Surely then--it's no particular personal glory to you that your friend Miss Von Eaton's energy cavorts perpetually in the gold of her hair or the blue of her eyes, because rain or shine, congeniality or noncongeniality, her energy hasn't any other place to go. But I tell you it means some compliment to a man when in a bleak, dour, work-worn personality like the old Botany dame's for instance he finds himself able to lure out into occasional facial ecstasy the _amazing_ vitality which has been slaving for Science alone these past fifty years. Mushrooms are what the old Botany dame is interested in, Barton.