"And you changed the wearing of your hair, your pale, lovely hair that would be a poet's joy, as that little Juliette said of it to me, because I asked you?"
The touch of his hand on hers was gone, she was on the snow-wet step, he below, lifting his hat—correct Tuttle!—even in the swirling snow, bidding her hurry in and change her damp garments, saying good night, gone.
And she? Giving herself one moment to stand there, one pulsing, palpitating, trembling moment before she opened the door and went in to shabby, dreary, ordinary things, might not ask herself what this come upon her was? Nor what it meant? Nor what it portended? This warm, stealing, permeating, this vitalizing glow, this rush as of rosiness through her body?
Might not ask herself this, but being Selina Wistar, fruit of Mamma's and Auntie's rearing, must close the doors of a so-called nicety upon life and truth and nature, and deny to herself by all she was bred to hold modest and seemly, that it was so. For was she not product of her day and time and up-bringing?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It seemed to Selina that at times she failed to get the satisfaction from her mother she could have desired.
"Mamma," she said to this little person the morning after the Harrison tea-party, "I can't be comfortable while I owe that fifty dollars to Cousin Anna Tomlinson."