“She held out her hand, smiling so gently, still with the cloud in her eyes, and we all sat down.  She did not look me over, though she must have yearned to do so.  But Andy looked me over thoroughly, questioningly, from the rhinestone pin at the top of the swaying hair, to the tips of my Nile green shoes.  I tried to talk, but my hair wabbled so, and little invisible hair pins kept visibleing themselves and sliding into my lap and down my neck, and my lips felt so moist and sticky, and my skin didn’t fit like skin, and—­still I was determined to live up to my part, and I talked on and on, and—­then, quite suddenly, I happened to glance into a mirror beside me.  There was some one else in the room.  Some one in a marvelous dress, with a white-washed throat, with lips too red, and cheeks too pink, and brows too black, some one with an unbelievable quantity of curls on top of her, and—­I turned around to see whom it might be.  Nobody there.  I looked back to the mirror.  I was not dreaming,—­of course there was some one in the room.  No, the room was empty save we three.  I turned suspiciously to Mrs. Hedges.  She was still in her place, a smiling study in wistaria and silver gray.  I looked at Andy, immaculate in black and white.  Then—­sickening realization.

“I stood up abruptly.  The atrocity in the mirror rose also.

“‘That isn’t I,’ I cried imploringly.

“Mrs. Hedges looked startled, but Andy came to my side at once.

“‘No, it certainly isn’t,’ he said heartily.  ’What on earth have you been doing to yourself, Connie?’

“I went close to the mirror, inspecting myself, grimly, piteously.  I do not understand it to this day.  The girls do the same things to themselves and they look wonderful,—­never like that.

“I rubbed my lips with my fingers, and understood the moisture.  I examined my brows, and knew what the scratching meant.  I shook the pile of hair, and a shower of invisible hair pins rewarded me.  I brushed my fingers across my throat, and a cloud of powder wafted outward.

“What does it say in the Bible about the way of the unrighteous?  Well, I know just as much about the subject as the Bible does, I think.  For a time I was speechless.  I did not wish to blame my friends.  But I could not bear to think that any one should carry away such a vision of one of father’s daughters.

“‘Take a good look at me please,’ I said, laughing, at last, ’for you will never see me again.  I am Neptune’s second daughter.  I stepped full-grown into the world to-night from the hands of my faithless friends.  Another step into my own room, and the lovely lady is gone forever.’

“Andy understands me, and he laughed.  But his mother still smiled the clouded smile.