This woman used to watch herself in the glass until she had her face as quiet and free from lines as she could get it--she used even to arrange the corners of her mouth with her fingers until they had just the right droop.
Then she observed carefully how her face felt with that placid expression and studied to keep it always with that feeling, until by and by her features were fixed and now the placid face is always there, for she has established in her brain an automatic vigilance over it that will not allow the muscles once to get "out of drawing." What kind of an old woman this acquaintance of mine will make I do not know.

I am curious to see her--but now she certainly is a most remarkable hypocrite.

The strain in behind the mask of a face which she has made for herself must be something frightful.

And indeed I believe it is, for she is ill most of the time--and what could keep one in nervous illness more entirely than this deep interior strain which is necessary to such external appearance of placidity.
There comes to my mind at once a very comical illustration of something quite akin to this although at first thought it seems almost the reverse.

A woman who constantly talked of the preeminency of mind over matter, and the impossibility of being moved by external circumstances to any one who believed as she did--this woman I saw very angry.
She was sitting with her face drawn in a hundred cross lines and all askew with her anger.