stirred in her that was almost romance--a memory of a dusty volume
of _Punch_ in an aunt's house in infancy: pictures of crinoline hoops
and croquet hoops and some pretty story, of which perhaps they were a part.
This half-perceptible fragrance in her thoughts faded almost instantly,
and Diana Duke entered the house even more promptly than her companion.
Tall, slim, aquiline, and dark, she seemed made for such swiftness.
In body she was of the breed of those birds and beasts that are at once
long and alert, like greyhounds or herons or even like an innocent snake.
The whole house revolved on her as on a rod of steel. It would
be wrong to say that she commanded; for her own efficiency was so
impatient that she obeyed herself before any one else obeyed her.
Before electricians could mend a bell or locksmiths open a door,
before dentists could pluck a tooth or butlers draw a tight cork,
it was done already with the silent violence of her slim hands.
She was light; but there was nothing leaping about her lightness.
She spurned the ground, and she meant to spurn it. People talk
of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible
thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.

"It's enough to blow your head off," said the young woman in white,
going to the looking-glass.

The young woman in blue made no reply, but put away her gardening gloves,
and then went to the sideboard and began to spread out an afternoon
cloth for tea.

"Enough to blow your head off, I say," said Miss Rosamund Hunt,
with the unruffled cheeriness of one whose songs and speeches
had always been safe for an encore.