she wished and
accepted her distribution of hours and duties; and her house was always
in order, comfortable, fit to live in. She had the gentle little fads of
a woman who has no great intellect and who takes pleasure in almost
simple, childish little femininities. If she happened to have a headache
or felt out of sorts, she thought it pleasant to lie on the sofa in her
bedroom with a heap of fashion-plates around her and quietly to think
out all sorts of costumes, which she did not require and did not order,
but which she just thought out, created, with the graceful fancy of a
dainty woman who loves pretty clothes. Or she could amuse herself with
tidying up her cupboards, going through all her laces and ribbons,
folding them up neatly, smoothing them out, laying them in the different
compartments of exquisite little Empire chests-of-drawers and scenting
them with orris-root. Or she could go through her trinkets--she had not
many--polishing her jewels and trying the effect of them upon herself
with a pleased laugh at those pretty things which sparkle so brightly
and enhance a woman's beauty. She was not interested in the larger
questions, did not understand feminism, was a little afraid of
socialism, especially because the poor were so dirty and smelt so
horribly. Still, she was charitable, though she was not at all well-off,
and often gave money to the poor and dirty, hoping above all that they
would wash themselves. And yet she had a fairly logical intelligence,
even though she was not cultured, even though she did not ponder deeply
on social questions or on art. Now that her vanity was dead, she was a
woman of the world, who thought the world tedious and tiresome and felt
just a need for sympathy and soft compassion. And only sometimes did the
strings within her seem to become more tensely stretched and there
sounded through her something like a vague sadness that suddenly made
her think and say to herself:

"How small we are and how small everything that we do is! I am growing
old now; and what has there been in my existence? Could there be
anything else in life? Or is life just like that, for everybody?"

In point of fact, she herself did not know that her heart had never
spoken. She had fallen in love with Van der Welcke, at Rome, because of
his good looks, in that atmosphere of vanity and drawing-room comedy
which had made her, after reading a couple of fashionable French novels,
talk sadly about her soul-weari