She had been a watchful mother over a not
particularly handsome family of daughters. This lovely young girl
needed mothering and she had refused it. She would go back, and
if she found she had been wrong and the girl was deserving and
honest, she would see what could be done.
The day was wretched. The snow had turned to rain. Mrs. Boyer,
shopping, dragged wet skirts and damp feet from store to store.
She found nothing that she cared for after all. The garments that
looked chic in the windows or on manikins in the shops, were
absurd on her. Her insistent bosom bulged, straight lines became
curves or tortuous zigzags, plackets gaped, collars choked her or
shocked her by their absence. In the mirror of Marie Jedlicka,
clad in familiar garments that had accommodated themselves to the
idiosyncrasies of her figure, Mrs. Boyer was a plump, rather
comely matron. Here before the plate glass of the modiste, under
the glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian
girl who looked like a willow wand, Mrs. Boyer was grotesque,
ridiculous, monstrous. She shuddered. She almost wept.
It was bad preparation for a visit to the Siebensternstrasse.
Mrs. Boyer, finding her vanity gone, convinced that she was an
absurdity physically, fell back for comfort on her soul. She had
been a good wife and mother; she was chaste, righteous. God had
been cruel to her in the flesh, but He had given her the spirit.
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