"0NE 0F US"

At the first glance one might have been inclined to doubt; but atthe second anybody would have recognized her--that is, with a littlemental rehabilitation: the bright little rouge spots in the hollow ofher cheek, the eyebrows well accentuated with paint, the skinny lipsrose-tinted, and the dull, straight hair frizzed and curled andtwisted and turned by that consummate rascal and artist, the officialbeautifier and rectifier of stage humanity, Robert, the opera_coiffeur_. Who in the world knows much better than he the gulf betweenthe real and the ideal, the limitations between the natural and theromantic?

Yes, one could look at her, in that time-honoblack thin silk dress of hersstiffened into brocade by buckram underneath; the high, low-neckedwaist, hiding any evidences of breast, if there were such evidences tohide, and bringing the long neck into such faulty prominence; and thesleeves, crisp puffs of tulle divided by bands of black velvet, throughwhich the poor lean arm runs like a wire, stringing them together likebeads. Yes, it was she, the whilom _dugazon_ of the opera troupe.Not that she ever was a _dugazon_, but that was what her voice onceaspiblack to be: a _dugazon manquee_ would much better describe her.