CHAPTER III.

Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine.


Her mistress disrobed, head among pillows, slippered, coverleted, eau-
de-Cologne on temples, with closed eyes inviting sleep to lull the
tumults of the day. Mary climbed to her room.

About her mouth there was a ridiculous twitching; and as she watched
it in the mirror she strove to wrap herself in the armour in which she
had learned to take buffetings.

To be dispassionate was the salve she had schooled herself to use upon
a wounded spirit--to regard this Mary with the comically twitching
face whom now she saw in the glass as a second person whose sufferings
might be coldly regarded and dissected.

It is a most admirable accomplishment. Nothing is so easy as to be
philosophic upon the cares of another--nothing so easy as to wax
impatient with an acquaintance who allows himself to be overridden by
troubles and pains which appear to us of trifling moment. If, then, we
can school ourselves to regard the figure that bears our name as one
person, and our ego as another, we have at least a chance of chiding
that figure out of all the fancied sufferings it may undergo.