t with pretty waves. This morning she brushed all her
hair as tightly back as possible, and made a hard twist at an ugly
angle at the back of her head. By doing this she did not actually
destroy her beauty, for her regular features and delicate tints
remained, but nobody looking at her would have called her even
pretty. Her delicate features became pronounced and hardened, her
nose seemed sharpened and elongated, her lips thinner. This display
of her forehead hardened and made bold all her face and made her look
years older than she was. Maria looked at herself in the glass with a
sort of horror. She had always been fond of herself in the glass. She
had loved that double of herself which had come and gone at her
bidding, but now it was different. She was actually afraid of the
stern, thin visage which confronted her, which was herself, yet not
herself. When she was fully dressed it was worse still. She put on a
gray gown which had never been becoming. It was not properly fitted.
It was short-waisted, and gave her figure a short, chunky appearance.
This chunky aspect, with her sharp face and strained back hair, made
her seem fairly hideous to herself. But she remained firm. Her
firmness, in reality, was one cause of the tightening and thinning of
her lips. She hesitated when about to go down-stairs. She had not
heard Evelyn go down. She wondered whether she had better wait until
she went, or go into her room. She finally decided upon the latter
course. Evelyn was standing in front of her dresser brushing her
hair. When Maria entered she threw with a quick motion the whole
curly, fluffy mass over her face, which glowed through it with an
intensity of shame. Evelyn, when she awoke that morning, felt as if
she had revealed some nakedness of her very soul. The girl was fairly
ill. She could not believe that she had said what she remembered
herself to have said.

"Good-morning, dear," said Maria.

Evelyn did not notice her changed appearance at all. She continued to
brush away at the mist of hair over her face. "Oh, sister!" she
murmured.

"Never mind, precious, we won't say anything more about it," said
Maria, and her voice had maternal inflections.

"I ought not," stammered Evelyn, but Maria interrupted her.

"I have forgotten all about it, dear," she said. "Now you had better
hurry or you will be late."

"When I woke up this morning and remembered, I felt as if I should
die," Evelyn said, in a choked voice.

"Non