through the white blinds and dulling her candles. What was the use of
going to bed? Her cold bath was refreshment enough, and she saw that a
slight trace of fatigue about the eyes only made her look the more
interesting. Before six o'clock she was completely equipped in her gray
traveling dress even to her felt hat, for she meant to walk out as soon as
she could count on seeing other ladies on their way to the springs. And
happening to be seated sideways before the long strip of mirror between
her two windows she turned to look at herself, leaning her elbow on the
back of the chair in an attitude that might have been chosen for her
portrait. It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-
satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense
because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care;
but Gwendolen knew nothing of such inward strife. She had a _naive_
delight in her fortunate self, which any but the harshest saintliness will
have some indulgence for in a girl who had every day seen a pleasant
reflection of that self in her friends' flattery as well as in the
looking-glass. And even in this beginning of troubles, while for lack of
anything else to do she sat gazing at her image in the growing light, her
face gathered a complacency gradual as the cheerfulness of the morning.
Her beautiful lips curled into a more and more decided smile, till at last
she took off her hat, leaned forward and kissed the cold glass which had
looked so warm. How could she believe in sorrow? If it attacked her, she
felt the force to crush it, to defy it, or run away from it, as she had
done already. Anything seemed more possible than that she could go on
bearing miseries, great or small.

Madame von Langen never went out before breakfast, so that Gwendolen could
safely end her early walk by taking her way homeward through the Obere
Strasse in which was the needed shop, sure to be open after seven. At that
hour any observers whom she minded would be either on their walks in the