Czipra, left to herself, before anyone could have entered, kneeled down
on the floor, and swept up from the floor with her hands the curls she
had cut off. Every one: not a single hair must remain for another. Then
she hid the whole lovely cluster in her bosom. Perhaps she would never
take them out again....

With that instinct, which nature has given to women only, Czipra felt
that the new-comer would be her antagonist, her rival in everything,
that the outcome would be a struggle for life and death between them.

The whole day long she worried herself with ideas about the new
adversary's appearance. Perhaps she was some doll used to proud and
noble attitudinising: let her come! It would be fine to take her pride
down. An easy task, to crush an oppressed mind. She would steal away
from the house, or fall into sickness by dint of much annoyance, and
grow old before her time.

Or perhaps she was some spoiled, sensitive, fragile chit, who came here
to weep over her past, who would find some hidden reproach in every
word, and would feel her position more and more unendurable day by day.
Such a creature, too, would droop her head in shame--so that every
morning her pillow would be bedewed with tears. For she need not reckon
on pity! Or perhaps she would be just the opposite: a light-hearted,
gay, sprightly bird, who would find herself at home in every position.
If only to-day were cheerful, she would not weep for yesterday, or be
anxious for the morrow. Care would be taken to clip the wings of her
good humor: a far greater triumph would it be to make a weeping face of
a smiling one.

Or perhaps a languid, idle, good-for-nothing domestic delicacy, who
liked only to make toilettes, to sit for hours together before the
mirror, and in the evening read novels by lamp-light. What a jest it
would be to mock her, to make her stare at country work, to spoil her
precious hands in the skin-roughening house-keeping work, and to laugh
at her clumsiness.

Be she what she might, she might be quite sure of finding an adversary
who would accept no cry for mercy.

Oh, it was wise to beware of Czipra! Czipra had two hearts, one good,
the other bad: with the one she loved, with the other she hated, and the
stronger she loved with the one, the stronger she hated with the other.
She could be a very good, quiet, blessed creature, whose faults must be
discovered and seen through a magnifying-glass: but if that other heart
were once awak