beside her at the great silvery glass above her fireplace, and drew my
head to hers, to compare the colours of our hair. ''Yours is the
darker,'' she said.
Then she moved away from the fire, for me to put her into her nightgown.
It was not much like undressing the chair in our old kitchen, after all. She stood shivering, saying, ''Quick! I shall freeze! Oh, heavens!''—for her bedroom was as draughty as everywhere else there, and my fingers were cold and made her jump. They grew warm, though, after a minute. Stripping a lady is heavy work. Her corset was long, with a busk of steel; her waist, as I think I have said, was narrow: the kind of waist the doctors speak against, that gives a girl an illness. Her crinoline was made of watchspring. Her hair, inside its net, was fixed with half a pound of pins, and a comb of silver. Her petticoats and shimmy were calico. Underneath it all, however, she was soft and smooth as butter. Too soft, I thought her. I imagined her bruising. She was like a lobster without its shell. She stood in her stockings while I fetched her nightgown, her arms above her head, her eyes shut tight; and for a second I turned, and looked at her. My gaze was nothing to her. I saw her bosom, her bottom, her feather and everything and— apart from the feather, which was brown as a duck''s—she was as pale as a statue on a pillar in a park. So pale she was, she seemed to shine.