No, she
demurred, not a baby's face, but--then she laughed aloud at herself--was
not her fate the common fate of all? Who, among her friends, at forty
years of age, was ever taken, or mistaken, for twenty-five or thirty? And
if _she_ were, what then? Would her work be worth more to the world?
Would the angels encamp about her more faithfully or more lovingly? And,
then, was there not a face "marred"? Did he live his life upon the earth
with no sign of it in his face? Was it not a part of his human nature to
grow older? Could she be human and not grow old? If she lived she must
grow old; to grow old or to die, that was the question, and then she
laughed again, this time more merrily. Had she made the changes herself
by fretting and worrying; had she taken life too hard? Yes; she had taken
life hard. Another glance into the glass revealed another fact: her neck
was not as full and round and white as it once was: there was a
suggestion of old china about that, too. She would discard linen collars
and wear softening white ruffles; it would not be deceitful to hide
Time's naughty little tracery. She smiled this time; she _was_ coming to
a hard place in her life. She had believed--oh, how much in vain!--that
she had come to all the hard places and waded through them, but here
there was looming up another, fully as hard, perhaps harder, because it
was not so tangible and, therefore, harder to face and fight. The
acknowledging that she had come to this hard place was something.
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