Book Two The Birth of the Butterfly Chapter 1 The Psychological Moment

They say all girls begin life thus heedless of beauty; but none get far along the road before they meet the need of it. So it was with me; and now I love to recall every pitiful detail of the beginning of the Quest of Beauty, the funny little tragedy of childhood that changed the current of my life--and of your lives, all you women who read.

It was one day after school, in the old life that has closed forever-- after the prairie school, dull, sordid, uninspiring, away in the West-- that a playmate, Billy Reynolds, was testing upon me his powers of teasing. I remember the grin of pleasure in his cruelty that wrinkled his round, red face when at last he found the dart that stung. His words--ah, they are no dream! They were the awakening, the prelude of to-day.

"Janey's prettier'n what you be," he said; and of a sudden I knew that it was true, and felt that the knowledge nearly broke my heart.

But could there be any doubt of the proper reply?

"Huh!" I said, shrugging my lean shoulders. "I don't care!"

The day before it would have been true, but that day it was a lie. I did care; the brave words blistered my throat, sudden tears burned my eyeballs, and to hide them I turned my back upon my tormentor.

It was not that I was jealous. I cared no more for Billy than for a dozen other playmates. It was just the fact that hurt. I was homely! Not that the idea was new to me, either. Dear me, no! Why, from my earliest years I had been accustomed to think of myself as plain, and had not cared. My earliest recollection, almost, is of two women who one day talked about me in my presence, not thinking that I would understand.