her like a veil, drawn close over head and shoulders.
Her face showed smooth and saint-like between the cloistral bands.
Majendie thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than that face
and hair, with their harmonies of dull gold and sombre white.

"I like you," he said; "but isn't the style just a trifle severe?"

Anne said nothing. She was trying to forget his presence while she yet
permitted it.

"Do you mind my looking at you like this?"

"No."

(They spoke in low voices, for fear of waking the sleeping child.)

She took up her brush, and with a turn of her head swept her hair forward
over one shoulder. It hung in one mass to her waist. Then she began to
brush it.

The first strokes of the brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its
ashen furrows. A shining undulation passed through it, and broke, at the
ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and
tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a
ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; it went
light on the top, till numberless little threads of hair rippled, and
rose, and knitted themselves, and lay on her head like a fine gold net;
then, with a few swift swimming movements, upwards and outwards. It
scattered the whole mass into drifting strands and flying wings and soft
falling feathers, and, under them, little tender curls of flaxen down.
With another stroke of the brush and a shake of her head, Anne's hair
rose in one whorl and fell again, and broke into a shower of woven spray;
pure gold in every thread.

Majendie held out a shy hand and caught the receding curl of it. Its
faint fragrance reached him, winging a shaft of memory. His nerves shook
him, and he looked away.

Anne had been cool and business-like in every motion, unconscious of her
effect, unconscious almost of him. Now she gathered her hair into one
mass, and began plaiting it rapidly, desiring thus to hasten his
departure. She flung back the stiff braid, and laid her finger on the
extinguisher of the shaded lamp, as a hint for him to go.

"Anne," he whispered, "Anne--"

The whisper struck fear into her.

She faced him calmly, coldly; not unkindly. Unkindness would have given
him more hope than that pitiless imperturbability.

"Have you anything to say to me?" she said.

"No."

"Well, then, will you be good enough to go?"

"Do you really mean it?"

"I always mean what I say. I haven't said my prayers yet."