And then, as it commenced to smoulder, and an acrid odour of burnt rubber emerged, she wrinkled her nostrils and put her thumb and finger to them. “It thmells bad!” she said. And reflectively: “I suppose conventions always do, at the end.... Well, it’s gone now, and my body is free.—Gone forever, leaving nothing but a ... faint unpleasant odour, shall I say?—behind.... Felix—would you mind if I cut off my hair?” “Cut off—!” “Short, you know. Like Dorothy Sheridan’s. I’ve always wanted to. And I never quite had the nerve. Living here, it seems only natural. You wouldn’t mind?” She loosened her hair and it fell about her shoulders, like a flame. “I think it would curl if it were cut. It did when I was a little girl.” “We’ve no scissors,” said Felix, practically—deferring in his own mind the question of whether he would like her hair cut short or not. He did not know. It would look well—there was no doubt at all of that. He had always wondered at the foolish vanity of women, in putting up with the inconvenience of long hair. He had felt that long hair was in some way a badge of woman’s dependence on man, a symbol of her failure to achieve freedom for herself. And yet ... when it came to Rose-Ann’s hair— Rose-Ann read his face as a wife can. “No, I suppose not,” she said, and sighed. “No scissors! Well, there’s always something to prevent one from being rash. In the morning I shan’t want to—because I’m going out to look for a job....” Felix smiled. “Wolf! wolf!” he mocked gently. He had heard that threat of a job too often to be alarmed about it now. “You’ll see,” said Rose-Ann gaily. 3 Felix was accustomed, by masculine prerogative, to get up first on cold mornings and shake down the fire and make the coffee. But this morning, having dreamed that he had arisen and performed these duties (a very realistic dream—he had heard the noise of the poker among the coals and smelled the fragrance of hot coffee!) he awoke to see Rose-Ann coming toward him with a cup and saucer, on a lacquered tray. “Your morning draught, my lord!” “Rose-Ann!” he said angrily. She should have let him make that coffee.... She knelt and offered him the cup, with the air of a page-boy. Then it was that he saw that her hair was shorn. Short bronze locks fell clustering about her face in tiny curls, making it boyish, and yet, it seemed, more girlish than ever. She turned sideways as he stared, and tilted her head. For the first time its proud contour stood fully and beautifully revealed. “Isn’t that better than an old top-knot?” she said. “But how—” he began. “Borrowed scissors from neighbour,” she replied. “What are neighbours for, if not to depend on in an emergency?” “Why is this an emergency?” he demanded, still withholding his approval. “Couldn’t you wait and go to the barber?” Some of the edges, he noted, were rather jagged.