"Oh, Joe," she murmured vehemently; "you're not a woman, so you can't see it all as I see it. Now, perhaps, it's all right, but in a few years ... just a few years.... Oh, my poor Sophy! The grey hairs ... will come ... then wrinkles.... Little by little, little by little, there, under his eyes—his hateful young eyes—she will grow old. She will look like his mother when she's fifty and he's only forty-five!"
"No, no, lady-bird, really you exaggerate!" slipped in the Judge.
"This can't be exaggerated!" said Charlotte. "It can't be—— Shakespeare couldn't exaggerate it!"
"He's got a right smart gift that way, honey," slipped in the Judge again.
Charlotte didn't hear him. She sat up, much to his relief, and putting her hands on his shoulders looked at him solemnly.
"Joe," she said, "you're a man, so you don't know about one of the worst tragedies in a woman's life—the tragedy of the hand-glass!"
"The what?" asked her husband.
"The hand-glass, Joe. That little innocent looking bit of silver-framed glass that you think I only use to do my hair with. Oh, some great poet ought to write an ode to a woman with her hand-glass! Talk of 'Familiars,' of 'Devils'—there's no Imp out of Hell...."
"Charlotte!" cried her astounded husband.
"I said out—of—Hell," repeated she firmly—"there's no Imp so cunning, so malicious, so brutal as a woman's hand-glass. First, like all devils, it begins by flattering her—when she's young. Then suddenly, one day, after long years of cunning flattery—suddenly—like that!..." She snapped her fingers in his still more surprised face.... "Like that!—the hateful thing tells her the truth—that she is growing old! Oh, just a shadow here—a line there—the first grey hair—— Nothing really—only—from that day, on and on and on relentlessly, the message, the odious message never stops! Oh, if anything ought to be buried with a woman, like her wedding ring, it ought to be her hand-glass—for it's been just as much a part of joy and pain as the ring has!"