Toward evening, she throws herself on the bed and sleeps.
XXXII.
"Be quick! Don't move so slowly."
Helen pulls the little curls about her temples, with an impatient twitch. Susanne does not reply, but seems to be a little more deft in her movements.
Helen is pale, and her face looks a little haggard; there is a peculiar brilliancy in her eyes; there is something vaguely pathetic in the droop of the corners of her mouth.
She sits quietly in her chair for a moment, evidently exerting herself to be calm. Susanne works intently at the heavy coils of her hair, and the gold pins she is skewering through it.
Presently, Helen leans forward to look at herself more closely in the mirror, and upsets a bottle of toilet water that deluges powders, brushes, toilet creams and the rest of the array on the low, French table.
She rises with an angry exclamation. She is quivering in every fibre. She says in a low voice, hoarse with irritation, nervousness, excitement:
"You may go. Get me a negligée first. I shall not dress to-night."