By this time I had much improved in health and in some respects in appearance. My eyes had regained their brightness, and there seemed no lack of the light of intelligence in them, though, as I should have supposed, in a person without memory, one would expect to find the gaze dull and slow and the glow of the sight dim. My figure had improved. I held myself erect, and a certain grace had come to my movements from my capacity as a dancer--for I was always thought a very good dancer--to take the moving platform of the deck. My cheeks had grown plump; the hollows had filled up, and the haggard look was gone. Nevertheless my face still showed as that of a woman of forty I remember once saying to Mr. McEwan, ‘What could have caused those fine lines to be drawn over my face?’
‘Nerves,’ he answered, in his short abrupt way.
‘If they were wrinkles it would be Time,’ said he. ‘Be satisfied with that explanation.’
‘Would the shock that turned my hair white thread the skin of my face with these fine lines?’ said I.
‘It all happened at once,’ he answered; ‘I would lend you a book on nerves if I did not fear that the reading of it would turn ye daft.’
‘Will the skin of my face ever grow smooth?’ said I.
‘Never smoother than it is,’ he answered. ‘Isn’t it as smooth and soft as kid? What more d’ye want?’
‘What I meant to ask was, will these fine lines which disfigure my face ever disappear?’
‘Heaven defend us!’ he cried, feigning a warmth which his countenance belied; ‘your sex are all alike. Your questions are all prompted by vanity. It is not “Is there any chance, doctor, of my ever recovering the faculties of my mind?” but “Shall I ever regain my beautiful complexion?” “Never mind about my sight failing; will the glasses you order me to wear become me?” “Never mind about my heart being affected; shall I be able to go on lacing so as to keep my waist?”’ and he departed leaving my question unanswered.
My complexion, however, had cleared with the improvement of my health; the dingy sallow colour was gone out of my cheeks, and a faint bloom had taken its place. It was as though my youth struggled to show its rosy face through the mask which calamity had stamped upon my countenance. This faint bloom, as I call it, might, in spite of the interlacery of fine lines, have brought my appearance to within a few years of my real age had it not been for my white hair, which was so fleecy and thin that you would only think of looking for the like of it on the head of an old lady of seventy or eighty years. Indeed, what with my figure, which was that of a fine young woman of seven- or eight-and twenty, what with my eyes and teeth, which corresponded with my figure, and what with my white hair, white eyebrow, scarred temple and finely-lined skin, as though the flesh had been inlaid with a spider’s web, I doubtless presented to the eyes of my fellow-passengers the most extraordinary compound of youth and age it could have entered into the nimblest imagination among them to figure.