side. One was elderly and feeble and was holding the arm of another of
the trio, who was young and pretty. Her age was perhaps twenty; she was
of medium height, slim, with a nice figure and nicely dressed. She was
a blonde, with light blue-grey eyes and fluffy hair of pale gold: there
was little colour in her face, but the features were perfect and the
mouth with its delicate curves quite beautiful.

But after regarding her attentively for a minute or so, looking out
impatiently for my bus at the same time, I said mentally: "Yes, you are
certainly very pretty, perhaps beautiful, but I don't like you and I
don't want you. There's nothing in you to correspond to that nice
outside. You are an exception to the rule that the beautiful is the
good. Not that you are bad--actively, deliberately bad--you haven't the
strength to be that or anything else; you have only a little shallow
mind and a little coldish heart."

Now I can imagine one of my lady readers crying out: "How dared you say
such monstrous things of any person after just a glance at her face?"

Listen to me, madam, and you will agree that I was not to blame for
saying these monstrous things. All my life I've had the instinct or
habit of seeing the things I see; that is to say, seeing them not as
cloud or mist-shapes for ever floating past, nor as people in endless
procession "seen rather than distinguished," but distinctly,
separately, as individuals each with a character and soul of its very
own; and while seeing it in that way some little unnamed faculty in
some obscure corner of my brain hastily scribbles a label to stick on
to the object or person before it passes out of sight. It can't be
prevented; it goes on automatically; it isn't _me_, and I can no
more interfere or attempt in any way to restrain or regulate its action