She came to herself cautiously, glanced at her face in the mirror, and reached for the carved ivory pot of massage cream.
She decided then she would sew a little, instead of reading. The frill of lace in her net dress needed to be changed . . . such a bore having to leave your maid behind. She moved to the small, black-lacquered table where her work-box stood and leaned on it for a moment, watching the dim reflection of her pointed white fingers in the glistening surface of the wood. They did not look like Marise's brown, uncared-for hands. She opened the inlaid box and took from it the thimble which she had bought in Siena, the little antique masterpiece of North Italian gold-work. What a fulfilment of oneself it was to make life beautiful by beautifying all its implements. What a revelation it might be to Neale, how a woman could make everything she touched exquisite, to Neale who had only known Marise, subdued helplessly to the roughness of the rough things about her, Marise who had capitulated to America and surrendered to the ugliness of American life.
But none of that, none of that! She was near the danger line again. She felt the flesh on her face begin to grow tense, and with her beautiful, delicate fore-fingers she smoothed her eyebrows into relaxed calm again.
She must keep herself occupied, incessantly; that was the only thing possible. She had been about to have recourse to the old, old tranquillizer of women, the setting of fine stitches. She would fix her mind on that . . . a frill of lace for the net dress . . . which lace? She lifted the cover from the long, satin-covered box and fingered over the laces in it, forcing herself to feel the suitable reaction to their differing physiognomies, to admire the robustness of the Carrick-Macross, the boldness of design of the Argentan, the complicated fineness of the English Point. She decided, as harmonizing best with the temperament of the net dress, on Malines, a strip of this perfect, first-Napoleon Malines. What an aristocratic lace it was, with its cobwebby fond-de-neige background and its fourpetaled flowers in the scrolls. Americans were barbarians indeed that Malines was so little known; in fact hardly recognized at all. Most Americans would probably take this priceless creation in her hand for something bought at a ten-cent store, because of its simplicity and classic reticence of design. They always wanted, as they would say themselves, something more to show for their money. Their only idea of "real lace," as they vulgarly called it (as if anything could be lace that wasn't real), was that showy, awful Brussels, manufactured for exportation, which was sold in those terrible tourists' shops in Belgium, with the sprawling patterns made out of coarse braid and appliquéd on, not an organic part of the life of the design.
She stopped her work for a moment to look more closely at the filmy lace in her hand, to note if the mesh of the réseau were circular or hexagonal. She fancied that she was the only American woman of her acquaintance who knew the difference, who had the least culture in the matter of lace . . . except Marise, of course, and it was positively worse for Marise to have been initiated and then turn back to commonness, than for those other well-meaning, Philistine American women who were at least innocently ignorant. Having known the exquisite lore of lace, how could Marise have let it and all the rest of the lore of civilization drop for these coarse occupations of hers, now? How could she have let life coarsen her, as it had, how could she have fallen into such common ways, with her sun-browned hair, and her roughened hands, and her inexactly adjusted dresses, and the fatal middle-aged lines beginning to show from the corner of the ear down into the neck, and not an effort made to stop them. But as to wrinkles, of course a woman as unrestrained as Marise was bound to get them early. She had never learned the ABC of woman's wisdom, the steady cult of self-care, self-beautifying, self-refining. How long would it be before Neale . . .
No! None of that! She must get back to impersonal thoughts. What was it she had selected as subject for consideration? It had been lace. What about lace? Lace . . . ? Her mind balked, openly rebellious. She could not make it think of lace again. She was in a panic, and cast about her for some strong defense . . . oh! just the thing . . . the new hat.
She would try on the new hat which had just come from New York. She had been waiting for a leisurely moment, really to be able to put her attention on that.
She opened the gaily printed round pasteboard box, and took out the creation. She put it on with care, low over her eyebrows, adjusting it carefully by feel, before she looked at herself to get the first impression. Then, hand-glass in hand, she began to study it seriously from various angles. When she was convinced that from every view-point her profile had the unlovely and inharmonious silhouette fashionable that summer, she drew a long breath of relief, and took it off gently, looking at it with pleasure. Nothing gives one such self-confidence, she reflected, as the certainty of having the right sort of hat. How much better "chic" was than beauty!