"I beg your pardon for staring at you. You are so very contradictory, and in so many ways, that I took the liberty of guessing at your real character; whether after all you are unpleasantly perfect, or whether it is merely your luck to possess an awe-inspiring exterior."
She was unable to repress a laugh. "And what have you decided?"
"I have not decided; that is, not finally. I keep arriving at new conclusions. My first impression was that you were a person of frigid altitudes,--severe, exacting, and abnormally superior. Then, later, I have thought you warm-hearted--even impulsive: that your indifference is not always real. But of that, I am not sure. Still, I believe you possess a lower and a better nature."
"You seem to have made wonderful discoveries in a very few hours."
"No, not bad at all. It is merely that you have bullied your natural character. You have made it toe the mark and behave itself. Never given it any vacations, perhaps."
She regarded him intently, as if in doubt as to his meaning.
"But you don't know the cause," he added.
"The cause," he said, "is the expression of your face."
"Yes. It is impossible for any being of earthly origin to possess the celestial qualities promised in your countenance. It is out of harmony with terrestrial things. Why, when those three men put out their hands this morning for you to touch, I held my breath at their presumption. I looked for three bolts from heaven to wither the extended arms."
"And your own face, Mr. Boyd, gives no indication of the subtleness of your irony: unkind, perhaps, but extremely clever."
"Irony! Never! I had no such thought! I am merely announcing the discovery that with a different exterior you would have been less perfect; but more comfortable."
"If this is not irony, it is something still more offensive. I gave you credit for a finer touch."
"Well, you see, having a tender conscience, you have felt a sense of fraud whenever confronted by your own reflection. Being human, you have had, presumably, ambitions, envies, appetites, prejudices, vanities, and other human ills of which the face before you gave no indication. And so, feeling the preternatural excellence of that face a lie, you have tried to live up to it; that is, to avoid being a humbug. In short, your life has been a strenuous endeavor to be unnecessarily wise and impossibly good."