She was not yet an angel, only a poor, human girl with the longings of her kind, which would not be entirely stifled as long as her human heart beat.  But she did what she had planned.  Maria had an unusually high forehead.  It might have given evidence of intellect, of goodness, but it was not beautiful.  She had always fluffed her blond hair over it, concealing it with pretty waves.  This morning she brushed all her hair as tightly back as possible, and made a hard twist at an ugly angle at the back of her head.  By doing this she did not actually destroy her beauty, for her regular features and delicate tints remained, but nobody looking at her would have called her even pretty.  Her delicate features became pronounced and hardened, her nose seemed sharpened and elongated, her lips thinner.  This display of her forehead hardened and made bold all her face and made her look years older than she was.  Maria looked at herself in the glass with a sort of horror.  She had always been fond of herself in the glass.  She had loved that double of herself which had come and gone at her bidding, but now it was different.  She was actually afraid of the stern, thin visage which confronted her, which was herself, yet not herself.  When she was fully dressed it was worse still.  She put on a gray gown which had never been becoming.  It was not properly fitted.  It was short-waisted, and gave her figure a short, chunky appearance.  This chunky aspect, with her sharp face and strained back hair, made her seem fairly hideous to herself.  But she remained firm.  Her firmness, in reality, was one cause of the tightening and thinning of her lips.  She hesitated when about to go down-stairs.  She had not heard Evelyn go down.  She wondered whether she had better wait until she went, or go into her room.  She finally decided upon the latter course.  Evelyn was standing in front of her dresser brushing her hair.  When Maria entered she threw with a quick motion the whole curly, fluffy mass over her face, which glowed through it with an intensity of shame.  Evelyn, when she awoke that morning, felt as if she had revealed some nakedness of her very soul.  The girl was fairly ill.  She could not believe that she had said what she remembered herself to have said.

“Good-morning, dear,” said Maria.

Evelyn did not notice her changed appearance at all.  She continued to brush away at the mist of hair over her face.  “Oh, sister!” she murmured.

“Never mind, precious, we won’t say anything more about it,” said Maria, and her voice had maternal inflections.

“I ought not,” stammered Evelyn, but Maria interrupted her.

“I have forgotten all about it, dear,” she said.  “Now you had better hurry or you will be late.”

“When I woke up this morning and remembered, I felt as if I should die,” Evelyn said, in a choked voice.

“Nonsense,” said Maria.  “You won’t die, and it will all come out right.  Don’t worry anything about it or think anything more about it.  Why don’t you wear your red dress to school to-day?  It is pleasant.”