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 "I don't know," said Mrs. Roche slowly. "I don't think it's very personal. After all, it's only the husk of one—unavoidably there. But one's clothes are part of what one has got to say. Eve was much more herself when she began putting flowers in her hair than when she sat about in just—no fig-leaves. And she was much more herself than ever when she had got the fig-leaves on, and you and I are much more ourselves than she was."

"Then do you think covering oneself up is being real?" asked Laura. She entered the conversation with heavy, serious grace, as she would have entered a room.

"I don't know," said Gilda Roche. "The less of me that's visible, the more I'm there."

Laura, looking at Gilda's face so nearly on a level with her own, believed that it was one of the dearest on earth, with those satirical eyes. It was in this belief that she came to stay for long week-ends, and was hurt by Mrs. Roche's other incomprehensible friends. "That's your mind?" she said. "You mean you feel a deeper sense of identity behind reserve?"