n upstairs, gave her father his tobacco, filled his pipe for
him, and petted him as he lighted it.

CHAPTER XI

After that, she went to her room and sat down before her three-leaved
mirror. There was where she nearly always sat when she came into her
room, if she had nothing in mind to do. She went to that chair as
naturally as a dog goes to his corner.

She leaned forward, observing her profile; gravity seemed to be her
mood. But after a long, almost motionless scrutiny, she began to produce
dramatic sketches upon that ever-ready stage, her countenance: she
showed gaiety, satire, doubt, gentleness, appreciation of a companion
and love-in-hiding--all studied in profile first, then repeated for a
"three-quarter view." Subsequently she ran through them, facing herself
in full.

In this manner she outlined a playful scenario for her next interview
with Arthur Russell; but grew solemn again, thinking of the impression
she had already sought to give him. She had no twinges for any
underminings of her "most intimate friend"--in fact, she felt that her
work on a new portrait of Mildred for Mr.

Russell had been honest and accurate. But why had it been her instinct
to show him an Alice Adams who didn't exist?

Almost everything she had said to him was upon spontaneous impulse,
springing to her lips on the instant; yet it all seemed to have been
founded upon a careful design, as if some hidden self kept such designs
in stock and handed them up to her, ready-made, to be used for its own
purpose. What appeared to be the desired result was a false-coloured
image in Russell's mind; but if he liked that image he wouldn't be
liking Alice Adams; nor would anything he thought about the image be a
thought about her.

Nevertheless, she knew she would go on with her false, fancy colourings
of this nothing as soon as she saw him again; she had just been
practicing them. "What's the idea?" she wondered. "What makes me tell
such lies? Why shouldn't I be just myself?" And then she thought, "But
which one is myself?"

Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; and her lips,
disquieted by a deepening wonder, parted to whisper:

"Who in the world are you?"

The apparition before her had obeyed her like an alert slave, but now,
as she subsided to a complete stillness, that aspect changed to the
old mockery with which mirrors avenge their wrongs. The nucleus of some
queer thing seemed to gather and shape itself behind the not