Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/129



The face in the glass caught her attention. It looked sallow, with lines under the eyes. The hair rolled back a little too severely for the prevailing mode, and she recalled her late visitor’s effectively adjusted side-combs, her soft, dark waves.

“They have time for it, evidently,” she mused, “and after all it is certainly more important than modal auxiliaries!”

And for half an hour she twisted and looped and coiled, between the chiffonnier and a hand-glass, fairly flushing with pleasure at the result.

“Now,” she said, looking cheerfully at a pile of written papers, “I’ll take a walk, I think—a real walk.” And till dinner-time she tramped some of the old roads of her college days—more girlish than those days had found her, lighter-footed, she thought, than before.

The flush was still in her cheeks as she served her hungry tableful, and she could not fail to catch the meaning of