me of the Convention of Associated Normal Schools. Kathryn
then informed them that the red-haired girl had married her teacher and
left the apartment and that Molly lived alone there.

"I'm very glad," said her mother. "I never liked that girl."

"She seems to have been a bad influence," Kathryn agreed
conservatively, and there, good, simple people as they were at heart,
it would have ended.

But here comes Eleanor upon the scene, Eleanor, with two boys, a
probable Warden for husband, and a father-in-law who has become very
respectably wealthy from long ago, almost forgotten investments in
Southern Railroads. And George is the only son. Eleanor wonders that
people can send their children to the public schools, and wishes that
Kathryn had married that college professor, even though his salary did
barely equal hers.

"Every woman ought to settle, you know--it's nonsense to discuss it."

"But I am settled, my dear," said Kathryn blandly, "and I'm not fond of
housekeeping. You don't get any time for anything else."

"!!!" said Eleanor.

Mrs. Dickett here intervened with news of Molly, and Eleanor's eyebrows
lifted.

"You don't mean to say she's living alone there?"

Mrs. Dickett nodded uncertainly.

"Really, mother, I must say! She must be crazy. It's not right at
all, and I'm sure George wouldn't like it."

"She's nearly twenty-seven," Kathryn put in coldly.

"As if that had anything to do with it! I'm going down to see her."

It was certainly unfortunate that she should have gone unheralded. The
first wave of classical dancing had begun to lap the shores of New York
society, and Molly's paper had got the first amazing pictures, the
first technical chit-chat of "plastique" and "masque" and "flowing
line." Behold Mrs. Eleanor then, tired and mussed with shopping,
dyspeptic from unassimilated restaurant-lunching (and a little nervous
at her task, when actually confronted with it), staring petrified at
Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet
backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman,
swayed and whirled and beckoned. A slender spiral of smoke rose from
the incense bowl before her: the odour hung heavy in the room. Three
or four women (much better gowned than Eleanor) and a dozen men
applauded from the drawing-room; a strange-looking youth with a shock
of auburn hair drew from a violin sounds which it required no knowledge
of technique to feel e