occupations of hers, now? How could she have let
life coarsen her, as it had, how could she have fallen into such common
ways, with her sun-browned hair, and her roughened hands, and her
inexactly adjusted dresses, and the fatal middle-aged lines beginning to
show from the corner of the ear down into the neck, and not an effort
made to stop them. But as to wrinkles, of course a woman as unrestrained
as Marise was bound to get them early. She had never learned the ABC of
woman's wisdom, the steady cult of self-care, self-beautifying,
self-refining. How long would it be before Neale . . .

No! None of that! She must get back to impersonal thoughts. What was it
she had selected as subject for consideration? It had been lace. What
about lace? Lace . . . ? Her mind balked, openly rebellious. She could not
make it think of lace again. She was in a panic, and cast about her for
some strong defense . . . oh! just the thing . . . the new hat.

She would try on the new hat which had just come from New York. She had
been waiting for a leisurely moment, really to be able to put her
attention on that.

She opened the gaily printed round pasteboard box, and took out the
creation. She put it on with care, low over her eyebrows, adjusting it
carefully by feel, before she looked at herself to get the first
impression. Then, hand-glass in hand, she began to study it seriously
from various angles. When she was convinced that from every view-point
her profile had the unlovely and inharmonious silhouette fashionable
that summer, she drew a long breath of relief, and took it off gently,
looking at it with pleasure. Nothing gives one such self-confidence, she
reflected, as the certainty of having the right sort of hat. How much
better "chic" was than beauty!

With the hat still in her hand, her very eyes on it, she saw there
before her, as plainly as though in a crystal ball, Marise's attitude as
she had stood with Marsh that evening before at the far end of the
garden. Her body drawn towards his, the poise of her head, all of her
listening intently while he talked . . . one could see how he was
dominating her. A man with such a personality as his, regularly hypnotic
when he chose, and practised in handling women, he would be able to do
anything he liked with an impressionable creature like Marise, who as a
girl was always under the influence of something or other. It was
evident that he could put any idea he liked into Marise's head just