Explore "Perch of the Devil" by Gertrude Atherton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
She heard her husband's voice as he entered the house, and hastily changed her walking suit for one of the soft tea gowns she wore when they were alone. This was a simple thing of a Copenhagen-blue silk, with a guimpe of fine white net, and trimmed about the neck and half sleeves with the newest and softest of the year's laces. She noticed with some satisfaction that her neck, below the collar line, was very white; and she suddenly covered the rest of it with powder, then rubbed the puff over her face. It was ordinary "baby powder" for the bath, for she never had indulged in toilet accessories, but it answered its purpose, if only to demonstrate what she might have been had she safeguarded the gifts of nature. And the dull blue gown was suddenly becoming.
Her husband, who had spent the intervening time in the library, ran upstairs whistling in spite of his girth -- he was the lightest dancer in Butte -- and knocked on her door before going to his own room.