Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/224

214 parted and drawn severely down across the pale and narrow forehead, reposed a small black satin cap edged with coffee-colored lace. Half mittens of knitted linen were on the lank hands clasped so fastidiously in front of a narrow waist elongated by its ruchings of rusty silk. On the scrawny throat hung a cameo brooch, oddly repeating the line of the pendulous dewlap under the yellow chin, where the neck, as long and lean as a turkey's, suggested a poised and persistent wariness. But once this was passed over, there was a general air of limpness, of deadness, about every line of the long body. It was something suggestive of starvation, of starved lives and starved souls, of empty years eked out in empty ways.

It was, Conkling had to admit, a striking enough face, with its long and narrow boniness and its high-bridged nose. But there was a promise of cruelty in the small mouth with its down-drawn corners, where the earlier lines of haughtiness had merged into a pursed-up network of little wrinkles. The eyes were deep-set and cold, of faded