Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/63

romantic idealism in her theory that anything real was better than that futile fingering of edged tools. . . . And that wild-haired, cheap tawdriness. . . .

She writhed in restless, rebellious shame, her hands covered her face, where the soft rosiness was turning to thick suffusing scarlet. . . . After all, if any one had seen, it must have looked quite the same, quite, quite the same.

The thought was intolerable. What was she to do? How get some denial of this sickening suspicion. Tell her sister, ask her what she thought? Ah, no, no; now she could never tell . . . and, in the glass, it seemed to her that her eyes looked bold and glittering, and her hair, with its carefully followed outlines and burnished softly-curving richness, appeared shapeless, unkempt unconsidered . . . Her ball-gown! she tore it from the box where it lay in its fragrant mistiness . . . it was disgraceful, it was immodest almost, she would never wear it again, never dance again, never see that man again. . . .

And as she stood before the glass, with passionate quivering lips, and eyes burning with stinging unfallen tears, the strange delicious thrill stole through her once more, the roseate flickers glowed on her cheek, the kiss seemed to touch her once more with its lingering pressure. . . . Ah, surely there was a point of view, surely there was a difference?

She tasted in that moment something of the weakness of womanhood—its pitiful groping artificiality, its keen passionate realness.

I can