And the world goes on as before, and there is a
whispering in the moonlit garden, and young people steal off for wholly
superfluous glasses of water, and the men give her duty dances, and she
is old--ah, so old!--under the rouge and inane smiles and dainty
fripperies that caricature her lost youth! No, my dear, you needn't envy
this woman! Pity her, my dear!" pleaded Clarice Pendomer, and with a
note of earnestness in her voice.
"Such a woman," said Patricia, with distinctness, "deserves no pity."
"Well," Mrs. Pendomer conceded, drily, "she doesn't get it. Probably,
because she always grows fat, from sheer lack of will-power to resist
sloth and gluttony--the only agreeable vices left her; and by no stretch
of the imagination can a fat woman be converted into either a pleasing
or heroic figure."
Mrs. Pendomer paused for a breathing-space, and smiled, though not very
pleasantly.
"It is, doubtless," said she, "a sight for gods--and quite certainly for
men--to laugh at, this silly woman striving to regain a vanished
frugality of waist.
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