r.
Her lifted hands hesitated; she re-arranged the slight
displacement of her hair already effected; set two chairs before
the mirror, seated herself in one; pulled up her dress, where it
was slipping from her shoulder, rested an arm upon the back of the
other chair as, earlier in the evening, she had rested it upon the
iron railing of the porch, and, leaning forward, assumed as
exactly as possible the attitude in which she had sat so long
beside Valentine Corliss. She leaned very slowly closer and yet
closer to the mirror; a rich colour spread over her; her eyes,
gazing into themselves, became dreamy, inexpressibly wistful,
cloudily sweet; her breath was tumultuous. "`Even as you and I'?"
she whispered.

Then, in the final moment of this after-the-fact rehearsal, as her
face almost touched the glass, she forgot how and what she had
looked to Corliss; she forgot him; she forgot him utterly: she
leaped to her feet and kissed the mirrored lips with a sort of
passion.

"You _darling_!" she cried. Cora's christening had been
unimaginative, for the name means only, "maiden." She should
have been called Narcissa.

The rhapsody was over instantly, leaving an emotional vacuum like
a silence at the dentist's. Cora yawned, and resumed the loosening
of her hair.

When she had put on her nightgown, she went from one window to
another, closing the shutters against the coming of the morning
light to wake her. As she reached the last window, a sudden high
wind rushed among the trees outside; a white flare leaped at her
face, startling her; there was a boom and rattle as of the
brasses, cymbals, and kettle-drums of some fatal orchestra; and
almost at once it began to rain.

And with that, from the distance came a voice, singing; and at the
first sound of it, though it was far away and almost
indistinguishable, Cora started more violently than at the
lightning; she sprang to the mirror lights, put them out; threw
herself upon the bed, and huddled there in the darkness.

The wind passed; the heart of the storm was miles away; this was
only its fringe; but the rain pattered sharply upon the thick
foliage outside her windows; and the singing voice came slowly up
the street.

It was a strange voice: high-pitched and hoarse--and not quite
human, so utter was the animal abandon of it.

"I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie," it wailed and piped,
coming nearer; and the gay little air--wrought to a grotesque of
itself by this