Her art was a precise one, her studio a workshop of white paper and fine pointed hard pencils, her painting the mechanical perfection of an even wash of color.

And she saw, through the floors and walls and the darkness, the dust in the little shaded parlor--two days' dust at least, and Orchardina is very dusty!--dust in the dining-room gathered since yesterday--the dust in the kitchen--she would not count time there, and the dust--here she counted it inexorably--the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom upstairs.

Eight days since she had found time to go up there.
Lying there, wide-eyed and motionless, she stood outside in thought and looked at the house--as she used to look at it with him, before they were married.

Then, it had roused every blessed hope and dream of wedded joy--it seemed a casket of uncounted treasures.

Now, in this dreary mood, it seemed not only a mere workshop, but one of alien tasks, continuous, impossible, like those set for the Imprisoned Princess by bad fairies in the old tales.