splendour of the butchers' shops with their yellow flanks and 
their purple steaks; the blue and red bunches of flowers 
burning so bravely through the plate glass of the florists' 
windows. 

For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on
beauty; like a butterfly it seeks out color and basks in
warmth.  On a winter’s night like this, when nature has
been at pains to polish and preen herself, it brings back the 
prettiest trophies, breaks off little lumps of emerald and 
coral as if the whole earth were made of precious stone. 
The thing it cannot do (one is speaking of the average un-
professional eye) is to compose these trophies in such a way
as to bring out their more obscure angles and relationships. 
Hence after a prolonged diet of this simple, sugary fare,
of beauty pure and uncomposed, we become conscious of
satiety. We halt at the door of the boot shop and make some
little excuse, which has nothing to do with the real reason,
for folding up the bright paraphernalia of the streets and
withdrawing to some duskier chamber of the being where
we may ask, as we raise our left foot obediently upon the
stand, “What, then, is it like to be a dwarf?” 

She came in escorted by two women who, being of nor-
mal size looked like benevolent giants beside her. Smiling
at the shop girls, they seemed to be at once disclaiming any
lot in her deformity and assuring her of their protection. 
She wore the peevish yet apologetic expression usual on the 
faces of the deformed. She needed their kindness, yet she 
resented it. But when the shop girl had been summoned 
and the giantesses, smiling indulgently, had asked for shoes 
for “this lady” and the girl had pushed the little stand in 
front of her, the dwarf stuck her foot out with an im-
petuosity which seemed to claim all our attention. Look at 
that! Look at that! she seemed to demand of us all, as she 
thrust her foot out, for behold it was the shapely, perfectly 
proportioned foot of a well-grown woman. It was arched; 
it was aristocratic. Her whole manner changed as she