Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/128

 over me to the tips of my slippers and then went back again to my face. There was a kind of wistful admiration in her tired eyes. Then she walked over to the mirror and stared at her own aged and haggard reflection for a lengthy moment. There wasn't a sound in the room!

Abigail let forth a sigh that must have come from her very heels and slowly opened one of the windows. She looked so tragic and resigned I felt sure she was going to jump and I started over to her with Jerry, who had the same idea. But Abby waved us back with a queer smile, as if reading our minds. Bang! Out of the open window goes wig, beauty clay, rouge, powder, chin straps—everything! Off comes rings and bracelets and into a drawer with them. Next she snatches up a towel and vigorously rubs all the paint off her face, finally standing before us a plain, wrinkled gray-haired, disillusioned old woman, but there's a fiery sparkle in her rather nice eyes.

"That's that!" she says, in a firm voice that broke the unnatural silence. "I am finished masquerading—quite finished!" She looked at Thurston, who grinned callously at her, and a bit of natural color flushed her wan cheeks. "As for this contemptible creature who threatens me with ridicule if he is arrested—well, arrest him! I hope he gets a life sentence! Let him tell what he pleases, and I would like to see a metropoli-