n, looking from one to the
other, "and well preserved. Susan, I notice, shows signs of failing;
she has dropped her spectacles into the teacup. But to what end,
Miss--"
"Bunce."
"To what end, Miss Bunce, are you preserving them?"
"Madam, when you entered the room I was of your way of thinking.
Book after book that I read"--Miss Bunce blushed at this point--
"has displayed before me the delights of that quick artistic life
that you glory in following. I have eaten out my heart in longing.
But now that I see how it coarsens a women--for it _is_ coarse to
sneer at age, in spite of all you may say about uselessness being no
better for being protracted over much time--"
"You are partly right," Joanna interrupted, "although you mistake the
accident for the essence. I am only coarse when confronted by
respectability. Nevertheless, I am glad if I reconcile you to your
lot."
"But the point is," insisted Miss Bunce, "that a lady _never_ forgets
herself."
"And you would argue that the being liable to forget myself is only
another development of that very character by virtue of which I
follow Art. Ah, well"--she nodded towards her stepsisters--"I
ask you why they and I should be daughters of one father?"
She rose and stepped to the piano in the corner. It was a tall
Collard, shaped, above the key-board, like a cupboard. After
touching the notes softly, to be sure they were in tune, she
drew over a chair, and fell to playing Schumann's "_Warum?_" very
tenderly. It was a tinkling instrument, but perhaps her playing
gained pathos thereby, before such an audience. At the end she
turned round: there were tears in her eyes.
"You used to play the 'Osborne Quadrilles' very nicely," observed
Miss Susan, suddenly. "Your playing has become very--very--"
"Disreputable," suggested Joanna.
"Well, not exactly. I was going to say 'unintelligible.'"
"It's the same thing." She rose, kissed her step-sisters, and walked
out of the room without a look at Miss Bunce.
"Poor Joanna!" observed Miss Susan, after a minute's silence.
"She has aged very much. I really must begin to think of my end."
Outside, in the street, Joanna's husband was waiting for her--a dark,
ragged man, with a five-act expression of face.
"Don't talk to me for a while," she begged. "I have been among
ghosts."
"Ghosts?"
"They were much too dull to be real: and yet--Oh, Jack, I feel glad
for the first time that our child was taken
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