Woman Prepares – Man Proposes

Woman Prepares—Man Proposes
By Anne O’Hagan
SHE looked at herself with critical, unillusioned morning eyes and turned from the mirror with lips down-curved in deep discouragement.
“And I thought I looked so well last night,” she bemoaned herself softly. “Vain imbecile! I’m a pasty-faced, drab, uninteresting creature with as much intelligent animation as a flour dumpling. I look thirty-five if I look a day.”
Her lack-luster eyes, having relentlessly spied out her own imperfections, now took note of the shortcomings of her surroundings. It requires a supernal genius to make a combination bedchamber and living-room attractive before the chambermaid’s morning rounds, but Theodosia was in no mood to make allowances. She stared at the ashes on the hearth; the grate was rusty, the andirons dull. She stared at the Kelim rug and the pillows piled in the corner, waiting the moment when the cot bed should become again a luxurious divan—and she shuddered.
“It’s a hideous way to live,” she declared with a vehemence that almost brought the color into her pale cheeks. “Squalid! An honest tenement would be better.”
The pale green frock she had worn last night, stretched upon a hanger and swing

Đọc bản gốc tại Wikisource tiếng Anh