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a beauty—not classic features, I mean—should look so deadly serious when she's having her photograph taken. I should have thought even Mr. Campbell would have had the sense to make a little photographer's joke; or at least tell her to moisten her lips."

"You're right," said Carmichael. "The look is a very serious one; but I believe a portrait is all the better for that—as a portrait, I mean. Have you ever thought what an advantage the historians of the future will have over us? Think how late portraiture itself comes into history; I think I'm right in saying that a thumb-nail sketch of Edward II in the margin of an old chronicle is the earliest portrait preserved to us in English history. And when portrait-painting did come in, how soon the art was corrupted! You can see that Holbein was telling the truth; but by the time you get to Vandyck it's all court flattery. Whereas the historians of the future will be able to see what we really were like."

"It looks to me," said Reeves, "a sad face—the face of a woman who's had a good deal of trouble. I feel somehow that the serious pose of the mouth was natural to her."

"I don't think that's the ordinary impression you'd get from her face," put in Marryatt.

"How on earth do you know?" asked Reeves, staring.

"Well, you see, Campbell showed me this later photograph of her, and it wasn't at all like that."