Irene lit the candles on her bureau, and closed the window shutters. Little insects came frittering through the slanting wooden leaves; they were mad whorls about the cottonly candle flames until the heat kissed them to death. The girl took off the dressing sacque which she had worn as she lay upon the bed. Her clothes filled the camphor-scented darkness of a huge wardrobe closet: silk, muslin, lace, silk, poplin, merino, silk, silk, layer and fold and rustling promise. The Fannings thought it inconsiderate of her to have so many clothes … Her father’s estate yielded her nearly five thousand dollars a year … And she sent to Paris for thin stockings, and she wore them each day of her life, and Mrs. Fanning found a smutty horror in her doing it.

She removed the heavy petticoat, the stays, the thin little drawers, the shirt which drooped close against her hot, pear-shaped breasts. When she was wound in a long cotton nightgown and when her hair was let down, she felt weary and housewifely and no longer very sinful. She was a soldier’s wife, and that day she had sent him back, and she had been brave about his going. Last night his boots had stood in the corner; he slid under the sheets beside her, the golden male hair of him brushing her tender skin. At least there had been that much to their marriage: the awful physical intimacy had been a common piece of their existence for six days; they had been close, had slept side by side.

No curlers, no cap for her mass of coarse hair. It drenched all around her neck and shoulders, loose, tingling. Standing there on the rug beside the bed, she clenched her fingers and drew a long, shuddering breath … I’ll read, she declared, I’m not sleepy and I can’t go to sleep, but I refuse to dress and go downstairs. I’ll read the Press and the New York Tribune.

She lay with her shoulders deep in feather pillows, a Blazing Star quilt drawn up to her knees, and the pewter candelabra moved to a little walnut table beside her bed. The rustle of long newspaper sheets kept frightening tiny gray and pink moths which hissed over her. She wanted to get away from the war, but it was hard to do so. It kept poking out at her in thick, uneven columns: Incident on the Rappahannock. Letter from Mother of Five Soldiers, Two Have Been Wounded. The Rev. Mr. H. R. Gillbroughten will address the Christian Commission on Tuesday next. President Abraham Lincoln has been invited to attend services by the Union League in Philadelphia, July 4. Women experiencing pain, annoyance and illness from female troubles should not neglect Dr. John L. Lyon’s French Periodical Drops.