he wakened. They
hovered about her bed like vultures.

She reached under her pillow for her handkerchief, without opening her
eyes. She had a shadowy memory that there was to be something unusual,
that this day held more disquieting possibilities than days commonly
held. There was something she dreaded; what was it? Oh, yes, Dr. Archie
was to come at four.

A reality like Dr. Archie, poking up out of the past, reminded one
of disappointments and losses, of a freedom that was no more:
reminded her of blue, golden mornings long ago, when she used to waken
with a burst of joy at recovering her precious self and her precious
world; when she never lay on her pillows at eleven o'clock like
something the waves had washed up. After all, why had he come? It had
been so long, and so much had happened. The things she had lost, he
would miss readily enough. What she had gained, he would scarcely
perceive. He, and all that he recalled, lived for her as memories. In
sleep, and in hours of illness or exhaustion, she went back to them and
held them to her heart. But they were better as memories. They had
nothing to do with the struggle that made up her actual life. She felt
drearily that she was not flexible enough to be the person her old
friend expected her to be, the person she herself wished to be with him.

Thea reached for the bell and rang twice,--a signal to her maid to order
her breakfast. She rose and ran up the window shades and turned on the
water in her bathroom, glancing into the mirror apprehensively as she
passed it. Her bath usually cheered her, even on low mornings like this.
Her white bathroom, almost as large as her sleeping-room, she regarded as
a refuge. When she turned the key behind her, she left care and vexation
on the other side of the door. Neither her maid nor the management nor
her letters nor her accompanist could get at her now.

When she pinned her braids about her head, dropped her nightgown and
stepped out to begin her Swedish movements, she was a natural creature
again, and it was so that she liked herself best. She slid into the tub
with anticipation and splashed and tumbled about a good deal. Whatever
else she hurried, she never hurried her bath. She used her brushes and
sponges and soaps like toys, fairly playing in the water. Her own body
was always a cheering sight to her. When she was careworn, when her mind
felt old and tired, the freshness of her physical self, her long, firm
lines, the s