Chelda locked her door, picked a disfiguring thread off a delicately woven rose on the carpet, moved about the room with exceeding quietness and stealthiness, stopped occasionally before the dark reflection in her mirror, but in no way gave outward signs of any violent internal emotion.
After a time she put her hand to her throat as if something choked her. A turn of her head had entangled a jewelled pin in the lace about her neck. With infinite patience she detached the pin, then standing with her eyes fastened on it as they had been fastened on Aurelia's face, she gently insinuated its point under the velvety olive skin of her wrist.
One drop of blood came, then another and another, until finally, from the little slit that she continued lengthening, a soft continuous flow of crimson fell on the roses of the carpet.
This was barbarous,—a lapse into the torture customs of her forefathers. It did not hurt her, but her feelings were too fine to permit the disfigurement of her carpet, and, getting a basin of water, she went on her knees and carefully removed the stain.
Then walking back on her heels she gazed steadfastly at the reddened water. The towel fell from her hands, every muscle in her body relaxed. After the lapse of a few mesmerised minutes she fell heavily to the floor, her face turned up to the French cupids on her ceiling.
Hour after hour she lay there. The wind blew in through an open window on her rigid limbs, occasionally a distant bell chimed the hours from the town, but she neither felt the wind nor heard the bell. She had not fainted. Her senses were painfully, acutely alive, yet she paid no heed to any of the sounds of the night, and only stirred when darkness passed away and morning came, and a knock at her door proclaimed the arrival of Prosperity on his tour of arousing the family and depositing the hot water pitchers outside their bedrooms.
She must get up, or her aunt would come to seek her. She gradually raised herself, stood upright and motionless for a few minutes, then began a short halting approach to a mirror. One step at a time she took, and sometimes her reluctant feet carried her backward. The nearest mirror to her was one set in the wall, and surrounded by a carved wreath of flowers. It was small, yet it would serve her purpose.
At last she arrived before it. She shut her eyes to put off the moment for glancing into it. When she did look, when she saw what was revealed, she struck it sharply with her hand and cracked the oval face across its delicate curve.
However, the shock was over. Her fertile brain must now plan a way to shield herself from the outward avowal of her night of repressed mental anguish.
She went boldly up to a cheval-glass, and pulling the long pins from her hair, let it fall down over her gown. Its luxuriant masses were streaked with gray. In front, where it was brushed back from her aching forehead, it was snow-white. In a few short hours she had added ten years to her age.