back
of her neck, and another placed at her chilly feet. Marvel knew that a
hot bag must be covered with linen; Marvel knew that an alcohol rub
changes even a neuralgic's outlook. Marvel was perfectly familiar with
the latest non-depressant remedy for neuralgia, hunted up the empty
box, telephoned the druggist, and had the prescription filled and
ready to administer in half an hour; when she left the room it was
only to reappear with a cretonne-and-mahogany tray, fresh toast, and
weak tea, at the very psychological moment when the thought of food
ceased to be a horror.

Under these ministrations, what had promised to be an all-day siege
gave way so satisfactorily that by eleven {189} o'clock Clarissa,
arrayed in Marvel's blue negligee, was temporarily reposing on the
lounge in the living-room, while her own room was airing. She was in
that delicious, drowsy, yet stimulated, state which follows the
cessation of suffering.

For April, the day was unusually warm. The windows were open; the sun
was pouring happily in, contending in gayety with a great jar of
daffodils covering the low table at Clarissa's side. Marvel in a
dull-blue house dress, white-braided, sat across the room darning a
stocking, with an expression of severity. Mending was one of the
domestic duties for which she had little taste. Owing to her constant
activities as housekeeper and secretary for Clarissa, she had not yet
begun to attend lectures at the University. Her mother, I fear, was
{190} serenely blind to the implications of this fact.

Clarissa, lying high among pillows, in the peace that follows pain,
regarded her daughter with a profound pleasure. There was something
about her--was it the length of curling lashes veiling her eyes? or
the tendrils of fair hair the warm wind lifted on her forehead? or the
exquisite color that came and went in her cheeks? or the slender
roundness of her erect young body?--there was a something, at all
events, a dearness, an interest, a charm, unlike all other girls of
twenty-three! Not for the first or the second, but for the hundreth
time, that winter, Clarissa was conscious of an unutterable hunger for
the years she had foregone. She seldom looked at Marvel's bloom
without remembering that she had no mental picture of her girlish
charm, {191} her maiden magic. How was it possible to grow old without
such memories to feed her withering heart upon?

She must not think that the locust had eaten these years! The