There
was health in the face as well as thought. And there was power, which is
greater than health, more beautiful even than beauty. And then she turned
her eyes to the face's companion. Thin, sharp, faded, it met her eyes,
half-shrouded in the thick, tumbled hair that shone in the mirror with
the peculiar frigid glare that can only be imparted by a chemical dye,
and can never be simulated by nature. One cheek was chalk-white. The
other, which had been pressed against the horsehair of the sofa, showed
a harsh, scarlet patch. All the varying haggard expressions of the world
seemed crowding in the eyes of this scarecrow, and peering beneath the
thickly blackened eyelashes that struck a violent discord against the
yellow hair. The thin lips of the mouth were pressed together in an
expression of pain, fear, and weariness. Shadows slept under the eyes
where the face had fallen into hollows. To-night there seemed no vestige
of prettiness in those peaked features. Nothing of health, youth, gaiety,
or even girlhood, was written in them, but only a terrible, a brutal
record of spoliation and of wreckage, of plunder, and of despair. And
the gaslight, striking the flat surface of the mirror, made the record
glitter with a thin, cheap sparkle, like the tinsel trappings of the
life whose story the mirror revealed in its reflection.
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