Hitherto that portly lady's hair had been black. But now, as suddenly
as darkness vanishes in a tropic dawn, it was become light. No gradual
approach of the grey, for the black had been equally artificial. The
wig is the region without twilight. Only in the swart moustache
had the grey crept on, so that perhaps the growing incongruity had
necessitated the sudden surrender to age.

To both Madame Dépine and Madame Valière the grey wig came like a blow
on the heart.

It was a grisly embodiment of their secret griefs, a tantalising
vision of the unattainable. To glide reputably into a grey wig had
been for years their dearest desire. As each saw herself getting older
and older, saw her complexion fade and the crow's-feet gather, and her
eyes grow hollow, and her teeth fall out and her cheeks fall in,
so did the impropriety of her brown wig strike more and more
humiliatingly to her soul. But how should a poor old woman ever
accumulate enough for a new wig? One might as well cry for the
moon--or a set of false teeth. Unless, indeed, the lottery--?

And so, when Madame Dépine received a sister-in-law from Tonnerre, or
Madame Valière's nephew came up by the excursion train from that same
quiet and incongruously christened townlet, the Parisian personage
would receive the visitor in the darkest corner of the salon, with her
back to the light, and a big bonnet on her head--an imposing figure
repeated duskily in the gold mirrors. These visits, instead of
a relief, became a terror. Even a provincial knows it is not
_convenable_ for an old woman to wear a brown wig. And Tonnerre kept
strict record of birthdays.