cal
with each other in crying matters, but it is bad for us men if we treat
them in the same sensible way under the identical circumstances.
Margaret sat down again in her chair, and instead of taking up her
work, she leaned forward towards the weeping woman, to be ready with a
word of sympathy as soon as it could be of any use. She watched the
heavy head, the strong and coarse dark hair, the large animal
construction of the neck and shoulders, the massive hands, discoloured
now with straining upon themselves; nothing escaped her, as she quietly
waited for the sobbing to cease; and though she felt the peasant nature
there, close to her, in all its rugged strength, yet she felt, too,
that with certain differences of outward refinement, it was not unlike
her own. Her own hair, for instance, was much finer; but then, fair
hair is generally finer than dark. Her own hands were smaller than
Madame Bonanni's; but then, they had never been used to manual labour
when she had been a girl. And as for the rest of her, she knew that
Madame Bonanni had been reckoned a beauty in her day, such a beauty
that very great and even royal personages indeed had done extremely
foolish things to please her; and that very beauty had been in part the
cause of those very tears the poor woman was shedding now. Margaret was
quite sensible enough to admit that she herself, after a quarter of a
century of stage life, might turn into very much the same type of
woman. While waiting to be sympathetic at the right moment, therefore,
she studied Madame Bonanni's appearance with profound and melancholy
interest. She had never had such a good chance.

The convulsive sobbing grew regular, then more slow, then merely
intermittent, and then it stopped altogether. But before she lifted her
face from the hollow of her elbow, Madame Bonanni felt about for
something with her other hand; and Margaret, being a woman, knew that
she wanted her handkerchief before showing her face, and picked it up
and gave it to her. A man would probably have taken the groping fingers
and pressed them, or kissed them, probably supposing that to be what
was wanted, and thereby much retarding the progress of events.

Madame Bonanni pushed up the handkerchief between her face and her
elbow and moved it about, with a vague idea of equalising her colour in
one general tint, then blew her nose, and then sprang to her feet at
once, with that wonderful elasticity which was always so surprisin