"Sit down, won't you?" Lulu calls, from the dressing-room, where she is attiring herself in fresh white robes similar to those of Grace.
"I thank you, no," she is answered back. "I am fidgety. I am restless—not in the mood for keeping quiet. I prefer to walk about."
"Ah! Hysterical, I presume—is that it?" questions Lulu's rosy lips at the door, glancing at her with gently solicitous eyes.
"I dare say," not pausing in her restless walk, and Lulu, looking closer under the light mask of gayety, reads with a sigh traces of unrest in the fair, proud face.
It is a peculiarity of Grace's constitution or temperament that she can never keep still under the pressure of excitement or trouble. She is always in a quiver, and even when sitting down she is always rocking or tapping her foot, or perhaps it is only in the convulsive pressure of her pearly teeth on her red lips that she betrays inward unrest. I cannot give any psychological nor physical reason for this. I only know that it is so, and Lulu had found out this characteristic of Grace long ago.
"Darling," she says, coming into the room, swinging her broad straw hat by its blue ribbons. "Darling, what is it that troubles you?—anything new?"
"Anything new?" Mrs. Winans laughs, provokingly. "Lulu, dearest, is there anything new under the sun?"
"I am certain the sun never shone on anything before as rare as yourself," Lulu answers, with winning affection, lifting the small, half-gloved hand to her tender lips.
Mrs. Winans pulls it away, and dashes it across eyes that look suspiciously misty and dark.