irradiated her very soul, the beauty and the goodness, for Maria
never disobeyed but she was sorry afterwards, and somehow glorified
faults seem lovelier than cold virtues. "Well, run up-stairs to bed,"
said she. "Be careful of your lamp."

When Maria was in her own room she set the lamp on the dresser and
gazed upon her face reflected in the mirror. That was her nightly
custom, and might have been regarded as a sort of fetich worship of
self. Nothing, in fact, could have been lovelier than that face of
childish innocence and beauty, with the soft rays of the lamp
illuminating it. Her blue eyes seemed to fairly give forth light, the
soft pink on her cheeks deepened until it was like the heart of a
rose. She opened her exquisitely curved lips, and smiled at herself
in a sort of ecstasy. She turned her head this way and that in order
to get different effects. She pulled the little golden fleece of hair
farther over her forehead. She pushed it back, revealing the bold yet
delicate outlines of her temples. She thought how glad she should be
when her hair was grown. She had had an illness two years before, and
her mother had judged it best to have her hair cut short. It was now
just long enough to hang over her ears, curving slightly forward like
the old-fashioned earlocks. She had her hair tied back from her face
with a pink ribbon in a bow on top of her head. She loosened this
ribbon, and shook her hair quite loose. She peeped out of the golden
radiance of it at herself, then she shook it back. She was charming
either way. She was undeveloped, but as yet not a speck of the mildew
of earth had touched her. She was flawless, irreproachable, except
for the knowledge of her beauty, through heredity, in her heart,
which was older than she herself.

Suddenly Maria, after a long gaze of rapture at her face in the