she loved her work as a means of mere self-display. The frank
admiration which, into whatsoever house she entered, the grown-up sons
flashed on her; their eagerness to see her to the door; their
impressive way of putting her into her omnibus--these were the things
she revelled in. She was a nymph to whom men's admiration was the
greater part of life. By day, whenever she went into the streets, she
was conscious that no man passed her without a stare; and this
consciousness gave a sharp zest to her outings. Sometimes she was
followed to her door--crude flattery which she was too innocent to
fear. Even when she went into the haberdasher's to make some little
purchase of tape or riband, or into the grocer's--for she was an
epicure in her humble way--to buy a tin of potted meat for her supper,
the homage of the young men behind the counter did flatter and
exhilarate her. As the homage of men became for her, more and more, a
matter of course, the more subtly necessary was it to her happiness.
The more she won of it, the more she treasured it. She was alone in
the world, and it saved her from any moment of regret that she had
neither home nor friends. For her the streets that lay around her had
no squalor, since she paced them always in the gold nimbus of her
fascinations. Her bedroom seemed not mean nor lonely to her, since the
little square of glass, nailed above the wash-stand, was ever there to
reflect her face. Thereinto, indeed, she was ever peering. She would
droop her head from side to side, she would bend it forward and see
herself from beneath her eyelashes, then tilt it back and watch
herself over her supercilious chin. And she would smile, frown, pout,
languish--let all the emotions hover upon her face; and always she
seemed to herself lovelier than she had ever been.

Yet was there nothing Narcissine in her spirit. Her love for her own
image was not cold aestheticism. She valued that image not for its own