It was a cold day and she was muffled in velvet and furs. She sat down, loosened her wrap and let it slip backward, and as its sumptuous fulness left her figure it revealed it slender to fragility, and showed that the outline of her cheek had lost all its roundness. She smiled faintly, meeting Agnes' anxious eyes.
"Don't look at me," she said. "I am not pretty. I have been ill. You heard I was not well in Newport? It was a sort of low fever, and I am not entirely well yet. Malaria, you know, is always troublesome. But you are very well?"
"Yes, I am well," Agnes replied.
"And you begin to like Washington again?"
"I began last winter."
"How did you enjoy the spring? You were here until the end of June."
"It was lovely."
"And now you are here once more, and how pretty everything about you is!" Bertha said, glancing around the room. "And you are ready to be happy all winter until June again. Do you know, you look happy. Not excitably happy, but gently, calmly happy, as if the present were enough for you."
"It is," said Agnes, "I don't think I want any future."
"It would be as well to abolish it if one could," Bertha answered; "but it comes—it comes!"