ve in the white belvedere all the long time the moon required to rise
from the open sea, fill all the creeks with silver, and drain them dry
again as she sunk westwards, must have been torment to one whose left
cheek, from the long pale ear to the inhibited mouth, was one scar. That
scar was an epitome of all that was pathetic and mischievous about the
poor faint woman, this being formed to be a nun who had not been blessed
with any religion and so had to dedicate herself to the ridiculous god
of decorum. "Your aunt," Marion's mother had said to her, "burned her
face cleaning a pair of white shoes with benzine for me to wear at my
first Communion. It was a pity she did it. And a pity for me too, since
I have had to obey her ever since in everything, though I wanted
neither the white shoes nor the Communion." In that speech were all the
elements of Alphonsine's tragedy, and therefore most of the causes of
Marion's. The French thrift that had made her clean the shoes at home,
and thereby maim herself into something that desired to assassinate love
whenever she saw it, made her terribly exercised at the possibility that
the family might have to support a fatherless baby. The affection for
her sister Pamela which had made her perform these services had enabled
her to bring up that lovely child through all the dangers of a
poverty-stricken childhood in Paris, in spite of a certain wildness in
her beauty which might, if unchecked, have been a summons to disorder;
and her triumph in that respect had made it the most heartbreaking
disappointment when the temptations she thought she had baulked for ever
in Paris twenty years before returned and claimed so easily Pamela's
child, whom she thought quite safe, since to her French eyes Marion's
dark brows, perpetually knit in preoccupation with the movements of her
nature, were not likely to be attractive to men.

That must have added to her bitterness. It must have seemed very cruel
to Alphonsine that she, with her smooth brown hair which she coiffed
perfectly, her long white hands, and her slender body with its
hour-glass waist, which had a strange air of having been filleted of all
grossness, could never know the joy that could be obtained even by this
black untidy girl. That would account for the passion with which she
forced Marion to do the thing she did not want to; and any suspicion
that she was actuated by a desire to punish the girl for her happiness
she would be able to dis