"If I might say a word,—" he began.
"You may say anything," she exclaimed.
"If I were you I don't think—"
"You don't think what, Mr. Gibson?"
He found it to be a matter very difficult of approach. "Do you know, I don't think the fashion that has come up about wearing your hair quite suits you,—not so well as the way you used to do it." She became on a sudden very red in the face, and he thought that she was angry. Vexed she was, but still, accompanying her vexation, there was a remembrance that she was achieving victory even by her own humiliation. She loved her chignon; but she was ready to abandon even that for him. Nevertheless she could not speak for a moment or two, and he was forced to continue his criticism. "I have no doubt those things are very becoming and all that, and I dare say they are comfortable."
"Oh, very," she said.
"But there was a simplicity that I liked about the other."
Could it be then that for the last five years he had stood aloof from her because she had arrayed herself in fashionable attire? She was still very red in the face, still suffering from wounded vanity, still conscious of that soreness which affects us all when we are made to understand that we are considered to have failed there, where we have most thought that we excelled. But her womanly art enabled her quickly to conceal the pain. "I have made a promise," she said, "and you will find that I will keep it."
"What promise?" asked Mr. Gibson.
"I said that I would do as you bade me, and so I will. I would have done it sooner if I had known that you wished it. I would never have worn it at all if I had thought that you disliked it."