wind was blowing (it had been
another of poor Mhor's snow-less Christmasses!), making the curtains
billow out into the room, and she could hear through the open window
the sound of Tweed rushing between its banks. On the dressing-table lay
a new novel with a vivid paper cover. Jean gave it a little disgusted
push. Someone had lent it to her, and she had been reading it between
Christmas preparations, reading it with deep distaste. It was about a
duel for a man between a woman of forty-five and a girl of eighteen. The
girl was called Noel, and was "pale, languid, passionate." The older
woman gave up before the end, and said Time had "done her in." There
were pages describing how she looked in the mirror "studying with a
fearful interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their
light coating of powder, fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and
fullness of the skin below her chin," and how she saw herself going down
the years, "powdering a little more, painting a little more, touching up
her hair till it was all artifice, holding on by every little
device...."

A man had written that. What a trade for a man, Jean thought.

She was glad she lived among people who had the decency to go on caring
for each other in spite of lines and wrinkles--comfortable couples whose
affection for each other was a shelter in the time of storm, a shelter
built of common joys, of "fireside talks and counsels in the dawn,"
cemented by tears shed over common sorrows.

She smiled to herself as she remembered a little woman who had told her
with great pride that, to celebrate their silver wedding, her husband
was giving her a complete set of artificial teeth. "And," she had
finished impressively, "you know what teeth cost now."

And why not? It was as much a token of love as a pearl necklace, and,
looked at in the right way, quite as romantic.

"I'd better see how it finishes," Jean said to herself opening the book
a few pages from the end.

Oh yes, there they were at it. Noel, "pale, languid passionate," and the
man "moved beyond control." "He drew her so close that he could feel the
throbbing of her heart ..." And the other poor woman with the hard lines
and marking beneath the light coating of powder, where had she gone?

Jean pushed the book away, and stood leaning on the dressing-table
studying her face in the glass. This was no heroine, "pale, languid,
passionate." She saw a fresh-coloured face with a pointed chin,