I wonder if there is anything, any little thing I should have said, that tries a woman more than the changes in her own face, a woman that has just attained two score and—­an unmarried woman.  Prudence Pomeroy was discovering these changes in her own face and, it may be undignified, it may be unchristian even, but she was tried.  It was upon the morning of her fortieth birthday, that, with considerable shrinking, she set out upon a voyage of discovery upon the unknown sea of her own countenance.  It was unknown, for she had not cared to look upon herself for some years, but she bolted her chamber door and set herself about it with grim determination this birthday morning.  It was a weakness, it may be, but we all have hours of weakness within our bolted chamber doors.

She had a hard early morning all by herself; but the battle with herself did not commence until she shoved that bolt, pushed back the white curtains, and stationed herself in the full glare of the sun light with her hand-glass held before her resolute face.  It was something to go through; it was something to go through to read the record of a score of birthdays past:  but she had done that before the breakfast bell rang, locked the old leathern bound volume in her trunk and arranged herself for breakfast, and then had run down with her usual tripping step and kept them all amused with her stories during breakfast time.  But that was before the door was bolted.  She gazed long at the reflection of the face that Time had been at work upon for forty years; there were the tiniest creases in her forehead, they were something like the cracks in the plate two hundred years old that Marjorie had sent to her last night, there were unmistakable lines under her eyes, the pale tint of her cheek did not erase them nor the soft plumpness render them invisible, they stared at her with the story of relentless years; at the corners of her lips the artistic fingers of Time had chiselled lines, delicate, it is true, but clearly defined—­a line that did not dent the cheeks of early maidenhood, a line that had found no place near her own lips ten years ago; and above her eyes—­she had not discerned that, at first—­there was a lack of fullness, you could not name it hollowness; that was new, at least new to her, others with keener eyes may have noticed it months ago, and there was a yellowness—­she might as well give it boldly its right name—­at the temple, decrease of fairness, she might call it, but that it was a positive shade of that yellowness she had noticed in others no older than herself; and, then, to return to her cheeks, or rather her chin, there was a laxity about the muscles at the sides of her mouth that gave her chin an elderly outline!  No, it was not only the absence of youth, it was the presence of age—­her full forty years.  And her hair!  It was certainly not as abundant as it used to be, it had wearied her, once, to brush out its thick glossy length; it was becoming unmistakably