Helena folded the letter, laying the edges straight with slow

exactness.... He would carry out his promise if she held him to it.

She might drop him a line on the subject.... While her dazed mind

repeated his words, she was alertly planning her packing: "Can Sarah

fold my skirts properly?" she thought; but even as she asked herself

the question, she was saying aloud, "Marry him? Never!" She slapped

the letter across her knee. Ah, he knew that. He knew that her pride

would come to his rescue! The tears stung in her eyes, but they did

not fall.... Sarah must begin the next morning; but it would take a

week to close everything up.... Well; if he had ceased to want her,

she did not want him! What a letter she would write him; what

indifference, what assurances that she did not wish to hold him to

that "first arrangement"; what anger, what reproach! Yes; she would

"drop him that line"! Then it came over her that perhaps it would be

more cutting not to write to him at all. She raised her rag of pride

but almost instantly it fell shuddering to the dust--Sam Wright....

She sat up in her chair, trembling. Yes; she and David would start on

Monday; she would meet Lloyd in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and be

married that morning. Her trunks could follow her; she would not wait

for the packing. George must do up the furniture in burlap; a railroad

journey across the mountains would injure it very much, unless it was

carefully packed.

She rose hurriedly, and taking her travelling-bag out of the wardrobe,

began to put various small necessities into it. Suddenly she stopped

short in her work, then went over to the mantel-piece, and leaning her

arms upon it looked into the mirror that hung lengthwise above it. The

face that gazed back at her from its powdery depths was thinner; it

was paler: it was--not so young. She looked at it steadily, with

frightened eyes; there were lines on the forehead; the skin was not so

firm and fresh. She spared herself no details of the change, and as

she acknowledged them, one by one, the slow, painful red spread to her

temples. Oh, it was horrible, it was disgusting, this aging of the

flesh! The face in the mirror looked back at her helplessly; it was no

weapon with which to fight Lloyd Pryor's weariness! Yet she must fight

it, somehow. It was intolerable to think that he did not want her; it

was more intolerable to think that she could not match his mood by

declaring that she did not want him. "But that's only because of Sam

Wright," she assured herself, staring miserably at the white face in

the glass; "if it wasn't for that--! But I must get more sleep; I

mustn't let myself look so worn out."




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