"To what end, Miss Bunce, are you preserving them?"

"Madam, when you entered the room I was of your way of thinking.
Book after book that I read"--Miss Bunce blushed at this point--
"has displayed before me the delights of that quick artistic life
that you glory in following. I have eaten out my heart in longing.
But now that I see how it coarsens a women--for it _is_ coarse to
sneer at age, in spite of all you may say about uselessness being no
better for being protracted over much time--"

"You are partly right," Joanna interrupted, "although you mistake the
accident for the essence. I am only coarse when confronted by
respectability. Nevertheless, I am glad if I reconcile you to your
lot."

"But the point is," insisted Miss Bunce, "that a lady _never_ forgets
herself."

"And you would argue that the being liable to forget myself is only
another development of that very character by virtue of which I
follow Art. Ah, well"--she nodded towards her stepsisters--"I
ask you why they and I should be daughters of one father?"

She rose and stepped to the piano in the corner. It was a tall
Collard, shaped, above the key-board, like a cupboard. After
touching the notes softly, to be sure they were in tune, she
drew over a chair, and fell to playing Schumann's "_Warum?_" very
tenderly. It was a tinkling instrument, but perhaps her playing
gained pathos thereby, before such an audience. At the end she