personally, were devastatingly more troubling to her facial calm than
any most sickening picture in d'Annunzio's portrayal of small-town
humanity in which she was trying to take the proper, shocked interest.
Despite all her effort to remain tranquil she would guess by the stir of
her pulses that probably she had lost control of herself again, and
going to the mirror would catch her face all strained and tense in a
breathless suspense.

But if there was one thing which life had taught her, it was persevering
patience. She drew from the enameled bonbonniere one of the curious,
hard sweet-meats from Southern China; lifted to her face the spicy-sweet
spikes of the swamp-orchid in her Venetian glass vase; turned her eyes
on the reproduction of the Gauguin _Ja Orana Maria_, and began to draw
long, rhythmic breaths, calling on all her senses to come to her rescue.
She let her arms and her head and her shoulders go limp again, and fixed
her attention on rare and beautiful things of beauty . . . abandoning
herself to the pictures called up by a volume of translated Japanese
poems she had recently read . . . temples in groves . . . bells in the
mist . . . rain on willow-trees . . . snow falling without wind. . . .
How delicate and suggestive those poems were! How much finer, more subtle
than anything in the Aryan languages!

She came to herself cautiously, glanced at her face in the mirror, and
reached for the carved ivory pot of massage cream.

* * * * *

She decided then she would sew a little, instead of reading. The frill
of lace in her net dress needed to be changed . . . such a bore having to
leave your maid behind. She moved to the small, black-lacquered table
where her work-box stood and leaned on it for a moment, watching the dim
reflection of her pointed white fingers in the glistening surface of the
wood. They did not look like Marise's brown, uncared-for hands. She
opened the inlaid box and took from it the thimble which she had bought
in Siena, the little antique masterpiece of North Italian gold-work.
What a fulfilment of oneself it was to make life beautiful by
beautifying all its implements. What a revelation it might be to Neale,
how a woman could make everything she touched exquisite, to Neale who
had only known Marise, subdued helplessly to the roughness of the rough
things about her, Marise who had capitulated to America and surrendered
to the ugliness of American life.