ed that she
was so tall.

"The gown does not go back," she said.

"So?" he snarled, with a savage note in his voice. "Now hear me. There
shall be no more buying of gowns and fripperies. You hear? It is for
the wife to come to the husband for the money; not for her to waste it
wantonly on gowns, like a creature of the streets. You," his voice was
an insult, "you, with your wrinkles and your faded eyes in a gown of--"
he turned inquiringly toward me--"How does one call it, that color, Frau
Orme?"

There came a blur of tears to my eyes. "It is called ashes of roses," I
answered. "Ashes of roses."

Konrad Nirlanger threw back his head and laughed a laugh as stinging as
a whip-lash. "Ashes of roses! So? It is well named. For my dear wife
it is poetically fit, is it not so? For see, her roses are but withered
ashes, eh Anna?"

Deliberately and in silence Anna Nirlanger walked to the mirror and
stood there, gazing at the woman in the glass. There was something
dreadful and portentous about the calm and studied deliberation with
which she critically viewed that reflection. She lifted her arms slowly
and patted into place the locks that had become disarranged, turning her
head from side to side to study the effect. Then she took from a drawer
the bit of chamois skin that I had given her, and passed it lightly over
her eyelids and cheeks, humming softly to herself the while. No music
ever sounded so uncanny to my ears. The woman before the mirror looked
at the woman in the mirror with a long, steady, measuring look. Then,
slowly and deliberately, the long graceful folds of her lovely gown
trailing behind her, she walked over to where her frowning husband
stood. So might a queen have walked, head held high, gaze steady. She
stopped within half a foot of him, her eyes level with his. For a long
half-minute they stood thus, the faded blue eyes of the wife gazing into
the sullen black eyes of the husband, and his were the first to drop,
for all the noble blood in Anna Nirlanger's veins, and all her long
line of gently bred ancestors were coming to her aid in dealing with her
middle-class husband.

"You forget," she said, very slowly and distinctly. "If this were
Austria, instead of Amerika, you would not forget. In Austria people of
your class do not speak in this manner to those of my caste."

"Unsinn!" laughed Konrad Nirlanger. "This is Amerika."

"Yes," said Anna Nirlanger, "this is Amerika. And in Amerika all things
ar