She was unconsciously ridding herself
of all that hampered and made her unfit. From the soft feminine tissue,
intricacies of mood and fancy were being obliterated. Rudimentary
instincts were developing, positive and barbaric as a child's. In the
old days she had been dainty about her food. Now she cooked it in
blackened pans and ate with the hunger of the men. Sleep, that once had
been an irksome and unwelcome break between the pleasures of well-ordered
days, was a craving that she satisfied, unwashed, often half-clad. In
Rochester she had spent thought and time upon her looks, had stood before
her mirror matching ribbons to her complexion, wound and curled her hair
in becoming ways. Now her hands, hardened and callous as a boy's, were
coarse-skinned with broken nails, sometimes dirty, and her hair hung
rough from the confining teeth of a comb and a few bent pins. When in
flashes of retrospect she saw her old self, this pampered self of crisp
fresh frocks and thoughts moving demurely in the narrow circle of her
experience, it did not seem as if it could be the same Susan Gillespie.
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