ever say so! But now I have caught you, I have seen it. And
oh, Margaret, you are so changed!--you are the loveliest woman in the
world still,--but you have grown so thin; look at your hands." And she
held up one of Margaret's hands against the light to show its
transparency.

But Margaret drew her hand away. "If I'm thin, I am only following out
my privilege as an American woman," she answered, lightly. "Don't you
know that we pride ourselves upon remaining slender?"

"Slender--yes; that is what you _were_. Your arms were always slender,
and yet round. But now--" She pushed up Margaret's sleeve. "See your
poor wrists. Oh, Margaret, I do believe that before long even hollows in
your pretty neck will begin to show!"

"How can they, if I always wear high dresses?" said Margaret, smiling.

She rose as she spoke. But if her motive was to escape from further
scrutiny, she was not successful; Garda took hold of her and made her
sit down on a couch near one of the windows, and standing in front of
her to keep her there, she continued her inspection. "Yes, you are
thinner. There are little fine lines going down your face. And your face
itself has grown narrow. That makes your eyes too large, I don't like
your eyes now; they are too big and blue."

"They were always blue, weren't they?"

"_Now_ they are the kind of blue that you see in the eyes of
golden-haired children that have got to die," pursued Garda, making one
of her curiously accurate comparisons.

Suddenly she held Margaret's hands down with her own left hand, and with
her right pushed back swiftly the dark hair; it was the hair that lay
low over the forehead; for Lanse's taste was still consulted, his wife's
dusky locks rippled softly above her blue eyes, having now certainly
nothing of the plain appearance to which he had objected.

The forehead thus suddenly exposed betrayed at the temples a wasted
look, with the blue veins conspicuous on the white. "I knew it!" said
Garda. She sat down beside her friend, and kissed her with angry
tenderness. "What is the matter with you?" she demanded, putting her
arms round her and giving her a little shake. "You _shall_ tell me. What
is the matter?"

"A very natural thing; I am growing old, that is all." And Margaret
tried to rearrange the disordered hair.

"Leave it as it is, I am determined to see the worst of you this time.
You--with all that pretty hair and your pretty dresses--you have managed
to conceal it." And