Someone had lent it to her, and she had been reading it between Christmas preparations, reading it with deep distaste.

It was about a duel for a man between a woman of forty-five and a girl of eighteen.

The girl was called Noel, and was "pale, languid, passionate." The older woman gave up before the end, and said Time had "done her in." There were pages describing how she looked in the mirror "studying with a fearful interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light coating of powder, fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fullness of the skin below her chin," and how she saw herself going down the years, "powdering a little more, painting a little more, touching up her hair till it was all artifice, holding on by every little device...." A man had written that.

What a trade for a man, Jean thought.
She was glad she lived among people who had the decency to go on caring for each other in spite of lines and wrinkles--comfortable couples whose affection for each other was a shelter in the time of storm, a shelter built of common joys, of "fireside talks and counsels in the dawn," cemented by tears shed over common sorrows.
She smiled to herself as she remembered a little woman who had told her with great pride that, to celebrate their silver wedding, her husband was giving her a complete set of artificial teeth.

"And," she had finished impressively, "you know what teeth cost now." And why not?
It was as much a token of love as a pearl necklace, and, looked at in the right way, quite as romantic.
"I'd better see how it finishes," Jean said to herself opening the book a few pages from the end.
Oh yes, there they were at it.