aring like poppies
once more, and looking very much the better for the change, too; and
she felt that it was truly sad for young women to--well, to show
their hands, so to speak. They might have waited for some weeks before
returning to the colors of the secular.

She did not know that they felt that they had wasted too much time
in sober shades already. The days are precious in a world in which no
really trustworthy hair dye may be bought for money.

And then there came to her a month of coldly inquisitive doubt. (This
was when people had ceased to congratulate her and to talk, the nice
ones, of the great cleverness of George Holland; the nasty ones, of the
great pity that so delightful a man did not come of a better family.)

Why should she begin to ask herself if she really loved George Holland;
if the feeling she had for him should be called by the name of love, or
by some other name that did not mean just the same thing? Of course she
had thought a good deal--though her father did not know it--of love. She
had seen upon other people the effect of the possession of this gift of
love, how it had caused them to forget pain and poverty, and shame, and
infamy, and God, and death, and hell. Ah! that was love--that was love!
and she had hoped that one day such a gift of love would be given to
her; for it was surely the thing that was best worth having in the
world! Once or twice she had fancied that it was at the point of being
given to her. There had been certain thrilling passages between herself
and two men,--an interval of a year between each,--and there had also
been a kiss in an alcove designed by her dearest friend, Ella Linton,
for the undoing of mankind, a place of softened lights and shadowy
palms. It was her recollection of these incidents that had caused her
to fumble with the blind cord when her father had been suggesting to
her the disadvantages of inexperience in matters of the heart. But the
incidents had led to nothing, except, perhaps, a week or two of remorse.
But she could not help feeling, when that month of curious doubt was
upon her, that the little thrill which she had felt when one man had
put his arm around her for an instant, when another man--he was very
young--had put his lips upon her mouth--it was a straightforward
kiss--suggested a nearer approach to love than she had yet been
conscious of in the presence of George Holland. (He had never done more
than kiss her hand. Is it on record that