everishly in a tidy scentless drawer, and snatching out a bit
of black velvet, bound it about her neck. Yes--that was better. It gave
her the relief she needed. Relief--contrast--that was it! She had never
had any, either in her appearance or in her setting. She was as flat as
the pattern of the wall-paper--and so was her life. And all the people
about her had the same look. Wentworth was the kind of place where
husbands and wives gradually grew to resemble each other--one or two of
her friends, she remembered, had told her lately that she and Ransom
were beginning to look alike....

But why had she always, so tamely, allowed her aspect to conform to her
situation? Perhaps a gayer exterior would have provoked a brighter
fate. Even now--she turned back to the glass, loosened the tight
strands of hair above her brow, ran the fine end of the comb under them
with a rapid frizzing motion, and then disposed them, more lightly and
amply, above her eager face. Yes--it was really better; it made a
difference. She smiled at herself with a timid coquetry, and her lips
seemed rosier as she smiled. Then she laid down the comb and the smile
faded. It made a difference, certainly--but was it right to try to make
one's hair look thicker and wavier than it really was? Between that and
rouging the ethical line seemed almost impalpable, and the spectre of
her rigid New England ancestry rose reprovingly before her. She was
sure that none of her grandmothers had ever simulated a curl or
encouraged a blush. A blush, indeed! What had any of them ever had to
blush for in all their frozen lives? And what, in Heaven's name, had
she? She sat down in the stiff mahogany rocking-chair beside her
work-table and tried to collect herself. From childhood she had been
taught to "collect herself"--but never before had her small sensations
and aspirations been so widely scattered, diffused over so vague and
uncharted an expanse. Hitherto they had lain in neatly sorted and
easily accessible bundles on the high shelves of a perfectly ordered
moral consciousness. And now--now that for the first time they _needed_
collecting--now that the little winged and scattered bits of self were
dancing madly down the vagrant winds of fancy, she knew no spell to
call them to the fold again. The best way, no doubt--if only her
bewilderment permitted--was to go back to the beginning--the beginning,
at least, of to-day's visit--to recapitulate, word for word and look
for loo