Her beauty had endured the siege; no guns of mishaps could affect it, but that charm of evanescence which awakens tenderness was gone.

Jim Tenny's affection seemed to be waning, and Eva looked at herself in the glass even when bedecked with tawdry finery, and owned that she did not wonder.

She strained up her hair into the latest perkiness of twist, and crimped it, and curled her feathers, and tied her ribbons not as much in hope as in a stern determination to do her part towards the furbishing of her faded star of attraction.

"Jim don't act as if he thought so much of me, an' I dun'no' as I wonder," she told her sister.
Fanny looked at her critically.

"You mean you ain't so good-lookin' as you used to be ?" said she.
Eva nodded.
"Well, if that is all men care for us," said Fanny.
"It ain't," said Eva, "only it's the key to it.