e. The lines are years,
one for such and such a year, one for such and such another; the streaks
are months, perhaps, or weeks, or sometimes hours, where the tear-storms
have bleached the brown, the black, or the gold. "This little
wrinkle--it was so very little then!" she says. "It came when I doubted
for a day. There is a shadow there, just at each temple, where the cloud
passed, when my sun went out. The bright hair grew lower on my forehead.
It is worn away, as though by a crown, that was not of gold. There are
hollows there, near the ears, on each side, since that week when love
was done to death before my eyes and died--intestate--leaving his
substance to be divided amongst indifferent heirs. They wrangle for what
he has left, but he himself is gone, beyond hearing or caring, and,
thank God, beyond suffering. But the marks are left."

Youth looks on and sees alike the ill-healed wounds of the martyrdom and
the rough scars of sin's scourges, and does not understand. Clare
Bowring smiled, without definite expression, just because her mother had
spoken and seemed to ask for sympathy; and then she looked away for a
few moments. She had a bit of work in her hands, a little bag which she
was making out of a piece of old Italian damask, to hold a needle-case
and thread and scissors. She had stopped sewing, and instinctively
waited before beginning again, as though to acknowledge by a little
affectionate deference that her mother had said something serious and
had a right to expect attention. But she did not answer, for she could
not understand.

Her own young life was vividly clear to her; so very vividly clear, that
it sometimes made her think of a tiresome chromolithograph. All the
facts and thoughts of it were so near that she knew them by heart, as
people come to know the patterns of the wall-paper in the room they
inhabit. She had nothing to hide, nothing to regret, nothing which she
thought she should care very much to recall, though she remembered
everything. A girl is very young when she can recollect distinctly every
frock she has had, the first long one, and the second, and the third;
and the first ball gown, and the second, and no third, because that is
still in the future, and a particular pair of gloves which did not fit,
and a certain pair of shoes she wore so long because they were so
comfortable, and the precise origin of every one of the few trinkets and
bits of jewellery she possesses. That was Clare B