"I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got
used to me?"

"What on earth do you mean?" she said, coming back as far as the
threshold.

"When I first came you couldn't look at me," Bibbs explained, in his
impersonal way. "But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered
if I'd--"

"It's because you look so much better," she told him, cheerfully.
"This month you've been here's done you no end of good. It's the
change."

"Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium--the change."

"You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw," said Edith, with
supreme candor. "But I don't know much about it. I've never seen a
corpse in my life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly
sick, so you mustn't judge by me. I only know you do look better,
I'm glad to say. But you're right about my not being able to look
at you at first. You had a kind of whiteness that--Well, you're
almost as thin, I suppose, but you've got more just ordinarily pale;
not that ghastly look. Anybody could look at you now, Bibbs, and
no--not get--"

"Sick?"

"Well--almost that!" she laughed. "And you're getting a better color
every day, Bibbs; you really are. You're getting along splendidly."