Lulu had not grown big, but she had grown round. That look of the
primitive woman which had made her strange, had softened and sobered.
Her beaute troublante had gone. Her face was, the face of a happy woman.
The maternal look in her eyes was duplicated by the married look in her
figure. She was always busy. Even now, though she chattered, she sewed;
her little fingers fluttered like the wings of an imprisoned bird.
Indeed, she looked like a little sober mother-bird in her gray and brown
draperies. She was the best housewife among them. Honey lacked no
creature comfort.
Clara also had filled out; in figure, she had improved; her elfin
thinness had become slimness, delicately curved and subtly contoured.
Also her coloring had deepened; she was like a woman cast in gold. But
her expression was not pleasant. Her light, gray-green eyes had a
petulant look; her thin, red lips a petulant droop. She was restless;
something about her moved always. Either her long slender fingers
adjusted her hair or her long slender feet beat a tattoo. And ever her
figure shifted from one fluid pose to another. She wore jewels in her
elaborately arranged hair, jewels about her neck, on her wrists, on her
fingers. Her green draperies were embroidered in beads. She was, in
fact, always dressed, costumed is perhaps the most appropriate word. She
dressed Peterkin picturesquely too; she was always, studying the
illustrations in their few books for ideas. Clara was one of those women
at whom instinctively other women gaze - and gaze always with a
question in their eyes.
Peachy was at the height of her blonde bloom; all pearl and gold, all
rose and aquamarine. But something had gone out of her face -
brilliance. And something had come into it - pathos. The look of a
mischievous boy had turned to a wild gipsy look of strangeness, a look
of longing mixed with melancholy. In some respects there was more
history written on her than on any of the others. But it was tragic
history. At Angela's birth Peachy had gone insane. There had come times
when for hours she shrieked or whispered, "My wings! My wings! My
wings!" The devoted care of the other four women had saved her; she was
absolutely normal now. Her figure still carried its suggestion of a
potential, young-boy-like strength, but maternity had given a droop,
exquisitely feminine, to the shoulders. She always wore blue - something
that floated and shimmered with every move.
Julia had changed little; for in her case, neither marriage nor
maternity had laid its transmogrifying, touch upon her. Her deep
blue-gray eyes - of which the brown-gold lashes seemed like reeds
shadowing lonely lakes - had turned as strange as Peachy's; but it was a
different strangeness. Her mouth - that double sculpturesque ripple of
which the upper lip protruded an infinitesimal fraction beyond the lower
one - drooped like Clara's; but it drooped with a different expression.
She had the air of one who looks ever into the distance and broods on
what she sees there. Perhaps because of this, her voice had deepened to
a thrilling intensity. Her hair was pulled straight back to her neck
from the perfect oval of her face. It hung in a single, honey-colored
braid, and it hung to the very ground. She always wore white.