Darcy caught the inference. “Made in the image,” she said quickly. “But what am _I_ made in the image of!”
“What happened to change you from this?” Gloria held up Exhibit B.
“Well, I had an illness when I was thirteen. And about then we lost our money. And my parents died a little while after. And I never seemed to get back much life or spirit or ambition or digestion or anything.”
“Can’t get hold of your own boot-straps?” queried the other suggestingly.
“Haven’t got the lifting power if I did,” answered the girl. She picked nervously at her raveled and seedy sleeve. “Lee said he believed I could look like that—the way he made me look in the picture, you know—if only some one who knew could tell me how to go about it. D’ you think maybe—p’raps—it might be just partly possible?”
Once more Gloria compared Exhibit A with Exhibit B, and then both with the original.
“I do,” she pronounced with fitting solemnity.
“Oh-h-h-h!” breathed Darcy in a long-drawn, ecstatic sigh.
“At least partly possible. It’s worth the trial, in any case. Darcy,” said Miss Greene incisively, “I’m going to take you in hand, myself.”
“Oh, Gloria! If you would! I’ll love you forever for it.”
“You won’t. On the contrary, you’ll probably hate me poisonously before it’s half over.”
“For helping me to be something and look like something?” protested the girl incredulously. “How could I be anything but the most grateful—”
“Wait and see,” interrupted the oracle. “We’re going to begin our little magic process right now. Presto—pass! You’re a lay figure.”
“It doesn’t. It’s dead. It’s dumb. Don’t talk. You distract my mind.”
For several minutes she walked around the girl, debating her from every angle with pitiless impersonality, and with the analytical eye of the adept in a school wherein attractiveness is often a personal and technical achievement. At the conclusion of this ordeal Darcy found herself perched upon a high-backed seat while the actress expertly daubed her face with make-up from a box kept for purposes of experimentation. Next the subject’s hair was arranged, and her figure draped in the flowing lines of some shimmering fabric, chosen, after much profound consideration on Gloria’s part, from a carved chest. She was then told to straighten her spine, and smile. Near her lay Gloria’s hand mirror. Before the proprietor could interfere the girl picked it up and sat staring into it.