g till he came round the
corner and waved to her.

She looked from him to herself, to what she could see of herself--it was
not all, but more than enough. She saw her heavy red hands and the
coarse gown over her awkward knees, and the dismal slovenliness of her
attitude. She felt that he was remembering the slim, wild, sweet girl he
had married. And she was ashamed before his eyes, because she had let
the years prey upon her and had lazily permitted beauty to escape from
her--from her body, her face, her motions, her thoughts.

She felt that for all her prating of duty she had committed a great
wickedness lifelong. She wondered if this were not "the unpardonable
sin," whose exact identity nobody had seemed to decide--to grow
strangers with beauty and to forget grace.

II

Whatever her husband may have been thinking, he had the presence of mind
to hide his eyes in the water he had poured from the pitcher. He scooped
it up now in double handfuls. He made a great splutter and soused his
face in the bowl, and scrubbed the back of his neck and behind his ears
and his bald spot, and slapped his eminent collar-bones with his wet
hand. And then he was bathed.

Serina pulled on her stockings, and hated them and the coarser feet they
covered. She opened the wardrobe door as a screen, less from modesty for
herself than from sudden disgust of her old corset and her all too sober
lingerie. She resolved that she would hereafter deck herself with more
of that coquetry which had abruptly returned to her mind as a wife's
most solemn duty.

Then she remembered that they were poorer than they ever had been. Now
they could not even run into debt again; for who would give them further
credit, since their previous bills had been canceled by nothing more
satisfactory than the grim "Received payment" of the bankruptcy court?

It was too late for her to reform. Her song was sung. And as for buying
frills and fallals, there were two daughters to provide for and a son
who was growing into the stratum of foppery. With a sigh of dismissal
she flung on her old wrapper, whose comfortableness she suddenly
despised, and made her escape, murmuring, "I'll call the childern."

She pounded on the boy's door, and Horace eventually answered with his
regular program of uncouth noises, like some one protesting against
being strangled to death. These were followed by moans of woe, and then
by far-off-sounding promises of "Oh, aw ri', I'm git'nup."