As I do so, I catch an accidental glimpse of myself in a glass.

Good Heavens! Can three minutes (for I really have not been longer about it) have wrought such a monstrous metamorphosis?
Is every woman as utterly dependent for her charms upon her _husk_ as I am?
Can this sad, sallow slip of a girl be the beaming, shapely, British matron I contemplated with so innocently pleased an eye half an hour ago?
If, in all my designs, I could have the perfect success which has crowned my efforts at self-disfigurement, I should be among the most prosperous of my species.
I sit down as far from the window as the dimensions of the room will allow, call Vick, who comes at first sneakingly and doubtful of her reception, up on my lap, and take a book.

It is the one nearest to my hand, and I plunge into it haphazard in the middle.
This is the sentence that first greets me: "Her whole heart was in her boy.

She often feared that she loved him too much--more than God himself--yet she could not bear to pray to have her love for her child lessened." Not a very difficult one to construe, is it?
and yet, having come to the end, and found that it conveyed no glimmering of an idea to my mind, I begin it over again.
"Her whole heart was in her boy.

She often feared that she loved him too much--more than God himself--yet she could not bear to pray to have her love for her child lessened." Still no better! What _is_ it all about?
I begin over again.
"Her whole heart was in her boy," etc.