looking curiously into a woman’s room, littered with all the fripperies and expensive absurdities of a woman’s apparel?  Above all, why should he be so utterly ridiculous and inconsequential in his own mind as to find himself deeply fascinated by such a spectacle?  In all the years he had passed with his sister, so long as she had lived, he had never seen such a bewildering disorder of feminine clothes.  He had never had the opportunity of noting the pathetic difference existing between the toilette surroundings of a woman who is strong and well, and of one who is deprived of all natural coquetry by the cruel ravages of long sickness and disease.  His sister, beautiful even in her incurable physical affliction, had always borne that affliction more or less in mind, and had attired herself with a severely simple taste,—­her bedroom, where she had had to pass so many weary hours of suffering, had been a model of almost Spartan-like simplicity, and her dressing-table was wont to be far more conspicuous for melancholy little medicine-phials than for flashing, silver-stoppered cut-glass bottles, exhaling the rarest perfumes.  Then, since her death, Walden had lived so entirely alone, that the pretty vanities of bright and healthy women were quite unfamiliar to him.

The present glittering display of openly expressed frivolity seemed curiously new, and vaguely alarming.  He was angry with it, yet in a manner attracted.  He found himself considering, with a curious uneasiness, two small nondescript pink objects that were lying on the floor at some distance from each other.  At a first glance they appeared to be very choice examples of that charming orchid known as the ’Cypripedium,’—­but on closer examination it was evident they were merely fashionable evening shoes.  Again and again he turned his eyes away from them,—­and again and again his glance involuntarily wandered back and rested on their helpless-looking little pointed toes and ridiculously high heels.  Considered from a purely ‘sanitary’ point of view, they were the most wicked, the most criminal, the most absolutely unheard-of shoes ever seen.  Why, no human feet of the proper size could possibly get into them, unless they were squeezed—–­

“Yes, squeezed!”—­repeated Walden inwardly, with a sense of unreasonable irritation; “All the toes cramped and the heels pinched—­everything out of joint and distorted—­false feet, in fact, like everything else false that has to do with the modern fashionable woman!”

There they lay,-apparently innocent;—­but surely detestable, nay even Satanic objects.  He determined he would have them removed—­ picked up—­cast out—­thrust into the nearest drawer, anywhere, in fact, provided they were out of his stern, clerical sight.  Mrs. Spruce was continuing conversation in brisk tones, but whether she was addressing him, or the buxom young woman, who, under her directions was shaking out or folding up the various garments taken out of the various boxes, he did not know, and, as a matter of fact, he did not care.  She sounded like Tennyson’s ‘Brook,’ with a ’Men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever’ monotonousness that was as depressing as it was incessant.