"I will put on the black dress."
"Relieved by madame's parure of pink topaz?"
"Yes, I will wear the pink topazes."
"Then it will be necessary to modify the style of madame's coiffure."
"There is plenty of time."
Helen took a hand-glass from the table and leaned forward in the low, round-backed chair—faithful copy of a fine classic model. She wanted to see the full glory of the afterglow upon her profile, upon her neck, and bosom. Thus might Cassiopeia, glass in hand, in her golden chair sit in high heaven!—Helen smiled at the pretty conceit. But the glory was already departing. Sea-blues, sea-greens, sad by contrast, began to reassert their presence on walls and carpet and hangings.
"The black dress? madame decides to remain then?"
As she spoke the lady's-maid laid out the jewels,—chains, bracelets, brooches,—each stone set in a rim of tiny rose-knots of delicate workmanship. As she fingered them little, yellow-pink flames seemed to dance in their many facets. Then the afterglow died suddenly. The flames ceased to dance. Helen's white garments turned livid, her neck and bosom gray—and that, somehow, was extremely unpleasing to Madame de Vallorbes.
"Light the candles," she said, almost sharply. "Yes, I remain. Do hurry, Zélie. It is impossible to see. I detest darkness. Hurry. Do you suppose I want to stay here all night? And look—you must bring that chain further forward. It is not graceful. Make it droop. Let it follow the line of my hair so that the pendant may fall there, in the centre. You have it too much to the right. The centre—the centre—I tell you. There, let the drop just clear my forehead."
Thus admonished the French woman wound the jewels in her mistress' hair. But Madame de Vallorbes remained dissatisfied. The day had been one of uncertainty, of conflicting emotions, and Helen's love of unqualified purposes was great. Confusion in others was highly diverting. But in herself—no thank you! She hated it. It touched her self-confidence. It endangered the absoluteness of her self-belief and self-worship. And these once shaken, small superstitions assaulted her. In trivial happenings she detected indication of ill-luck. Now Zélie's long, narrow face, divided into two unequal portions by a straight bar of black eyebrow, and her lean hands, as reflected in the mirror, awoke unreasoning distrust. They appeared to be detached from the woman's dark-clothed person, the outlines of which were absorbed in the increasing dimness of the room. The sallow face moved, peered, the hands clutched and hovered, independent and unrelated, about Helen's graceful head.