ingly cheerful.
The other woman (the one in evidence when no guests were present) was
considerably past her first youth, languid, depressed, slovenly, and
ennuyee, though affectionate. Frequently, as I looked at her when,
smiling, rosy with the winter air, and happy in the consciousness of her
beauty, she came in from a round of calls and, taking off her hat, went
to look at herself in a mirror; or when, rustling in her rich, decollete
ball dress, and at once shy and proud before the servants, she was
passing to her carriage; or when, at one of our small receptions at
home, she was sitting dressed in a high silken dress finished with some
sort of fine lace about her soft neck, and flashing her unvarying, but
lovely, smile around her--as I looked at her at such times I could
not help wondering what would have been said by persons who had been
ravished to behold her thus if they could have seen her as I often saw
her, namely, when, waiting in the lonely midnight hours for her husband
to return from his club, she would walk like a shadow from room to
room, with her hair dishevelled and her form clad in a sort of
dressing-jacket. Presently, she would sit down to the piano and, her
brows all puckered with the effort, play over the only waltz that she
knew; after which she would pick up a novel, read a few pages somewhere
in the middle of it, and throw it aside. Next, repairing in person
to the dining-room, so as not to disturb the servants, she would get
herself a cucumber and some cold veal, and eat it standing by the
window-sill--then once more resume her weary, aimless, gloomy wandering
from room to room. But what, above all other things, caused estrangement
between us was that lack of understanding which expressed itself chiefly
in the peculiar air of indulgent attention with which she would listen
when any one was speaking to her concerning matters of which she had no
knowledge. It was not her fault that she acquired the unconscious habit
of bending her head down and smiling slightly with her lips only when
she found it necessary to converse on topics which did not interest her
(which meant any topic except herself and her husband); yet that smile
and that inclination of the head, when incessantly repeated, could
become unbearably wearisome. Also, her peculiar gaiety--which always
sounded as though she were laughing at herself, at you, and at the world
in general--was gauche and anything but infectious, while her sympathy