began:

"My dear, Rudolph has told me of this ridiculous affair, and--oh, you
equally ridiculous girl!"

She removed, with deft fingers, a damp and clinging bandage from about
Patricia's head, and patted the back of Patricia's hand, placidly.
Patricia was by this time sitting erect in bed, and her coppery hair was
thick about her face, which was colorless; and, altogether, she was very
rigid and very indignant and very pretty, and very, very young.

"How dare he tell you--or anybody else!" she cried.

"We are such old friends, remember," Mrs. Pendomer pleaded, and
rearranged the pillows, soothingly, about her hostess; "and I want to
talk to you quietly and sensibly."

Patricia sank back among the pillows, and inhaled the fresh air, which,
in spite of herself, she found agreeable. "I--somehow, I don't feel very
sensible," she murmured, half sulky and half shame-faced.

Mrs. Pendomer hesitated for a moment, and then plunged into the heart of
things. "You are a woman, dear," she said, gently, "though heaven knows
it must have been only yesterday you were playing about the nursery--and
one of the facts we women must face, eventually, is that man is a
polygamous animal. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but it is true.
Civilization may veneer the fact, but nothing will ever override it, not
even in these new horseless carriages. A man may give his wife the best
that is in him--his love, his trust, his life's work--but it is only the
best there is left. We give our hearts; men dole out theirs, as people
feed bread to birds, with a crumb for everyone. His wife has the
remnant. And the best we women can do is to remember we are credibly
informed that half a loaf is preferable to no bread at all."

Her face sobered, and she added, pensively: "We might contrive a better
universe, we sister women, but this is not permitted us. So we must take
it as it is."

Patricia stirred, as talking died away. "I don't believe it," said she;
and she added, with emphasis: "And, anyhow, I hate that nasty trollop!"

"Ah, but you do believe it." Mrs. Pendomer's voice was insistent. "You
knew it years before you went into long frocks. That knowledge is, I
suppose, a legacy from our mothers."

Patricia frowned, petulantly, and then burst into choking sobs. "Oh!"
she cried, "it's damnable! Some other woman has had what I can never
have. And I wanted it so!--that first love that means everything--the
love he gave her when I was only a messy littl