The room of hope was a square white box filled with shiny chrome cabinets. In the center was a table on little silent rubber wheels, with a lamp looking down upon it like a gigantic unblinking eye.

A slight willowy man gushed at her and gripped her arms with exuberance, and covered her over with the moist film of his bright and eager eyes.

His voice was high and shrill. "So you want to be beautiful, lovely to look at?"

"Yes."

"You shall be, my dear. Lie down please, lie down and trust me. You will have to trust me, of course. Simply have to trust me just the same."

"Will I be really beautiful—like the receptionist in the outer office?"

"Ha, ha, my dear!" He was pushing and pulling and finally she was lying down and staring at the whirling lines of the white ceiling and seeing Kelsey's smiling waiting yearning face in it. "That is a joke, a very funny joke. The receptionist out there is a human being. At least she would lead the unsuspecting to believe that she is. However, I must confess, my dear, that I have learned the sad truth that she is human in name only, that her heart is ice, and she is bitter with ambition."

"But she is so beautiful."

"Ah, but beauty is as beauty does, my dear. Or as beauty thinks. And sweet little ambitious Della in the outer office does not think lovely thoughts. Not at all, believe me. I have learned that from sad experience."

His hands hovered over her eagerly, fluidly, as though there were no bones in them.

"I want to be as beautiful as possible."

"You are fortunate in having been sent to Julian. I promise that under my touch you shall blossom into radiant beauty, the essence of feminine loveliness. You will be simply devastating."

He placed the tips of his long white fingers together and studied her with his head angled like a bird's. "A brunette, I think—"

"I'd rather be a blonde."

"Oh, you would, would you, my dear! You seem extraordinarily concerned for a robot." He stepped back and studied her curiously and the black eyes sharpened like narrowing beams of black searching light.

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