than one headstone had long since begun to sag
and the wreaths of bleeding heart to shrivel.

That was good, because the grave that is kept bubbly with tears is a
tender, quivering thing, almost like an amputated bit of self that still
aches with threads of life.

Even over the mound of her dead ambitions, which grave she had dug with
the fingers of her heart, Hattie could walk now with unsensitive feet.
It had become dry clay with cracks in it like sardonic smiles.

Smiles. That was the dreadful part, because the laugh where there
have been tears is not a nice laugh, and Hattie could sit among the
headstones of her dead dreams now and laugh. But not horridly. Just
drearily.

There was one grave, Heart's Desire, that was still a little moist. But
it, too, of late years, had begun to sink in, like an old mouth with
receding gums, as if the very teeth of a smiling dream had rotted. They
had.

Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids
now. Buxom negro ones, with pale palms, white eyes, and the beat of
kettledrums somewhere close to the cuticle of the balls of her feet.

She was irrevocably down on managers' and agents' lists as "comedy
black." Countless the premiers she had opened to the fleck of a duster!
Hattie came high, as maids go. One hundred and fifty dollars a week and
no road engagements. She dressed alone. Her part in "Love Me Long" had
been especially written in for the sake of the peculiar kind of comedy
relief she could bring to it. A light roar of recognition swept the
audience at her entrance. Once in a while, a handclap. So Hattie, whose
heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids now. Buxomly.

And this same Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to kiss Love,
but whose lips were still a little twisted with the taste of clay, could
kiss only Love's offspring now. But not bitterly. Thanksgivingly.

Love's offspring was Marcia. Sixteen and the color and odor of an ivory
fan that has lain in frangipani. And Hattie could sometimes poke her
tongue into her cheek over this bit of whimsy:

It was her well-paid effort in the burnt cork that made possible, for
instance, the frill of real lace that lay to the low little neck of
Marcia's first party dress, as if blown there in sea spume.

Out of the profits of Hattie's justly famous Brown Cold
Cream--Guaranteed Color-fast--Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate, had come
Marcia's ermine muff and tippet; the enamel toilet