what gets me,
Clive, is this: Athalie seems to me to be one of the
straightest ever. Of course she has changed a lot. She's
cleverer, livelier, gayer, more engaging and bewitching than
ever--and believe me she's some flirt, in a sweet,
bewildering sort of way--so that you'd give your head to know
how much is innocence and how much is art of a most
delicious--and, sometimes, malicious kind.

"That's the girl. And that's all she is, just a girl, with
all the softness and freshness and fragrance of youth still
clinging to her. She's some peach-blossom, take it from
uncle! And she is straight; or I'm a million miles away in
the lockup.

"And now, granted she's morally straight, how _can_ she be
square in business? Do you get me? It's past me. All I can
think of is that, being straight, the girl feels herself that
she's also square.

"Yet, if that is so, how can she fool others so neatly?

"Listen, Clive: I was at a dance at the Faithorn's;
tremendous excitement among pin-heads and debutantes! Athalie
was expected, professionally. And sure enough, just before
supper, in strolls a radiant, wonderful young thing making
them all look like badly faded guinea-hens--and somehow I get
the impression that she is receiving her hostess instead of
the contrary. Talk about self-possession and absolute
simplicity! She had 'em all on the bench. Happening to catch
my eye she held out her hand with one of those smiles she can
be guilty of--just plain assassination, Clive!--and I stuck
to her until the pin-heads crowded me out, and the rubbering
women got my shoulders all over paint. And now here's where
she gets 'em. There's no curtained corner, no pasteboard
trophies, no gipsy shawls and bangles, no lowering of lights,
no closed doors, no whispers.

"Whoever asks her anything spooky she answers in a sweet and
natural voice, as though replying to an ordinary question.
She makes no mystery of it. Sometimes she can't answer, and
she says so without any excuse or embarrassment. Sometimes
her replies are vague or involved or even apparently
meaningless. She admits very frankly that she is not always
able to understand what her reply means.

"However she says enough--tells, reveals, discovers, offers
sound enough advice--to make her _the_ plaything of the
season.

"And it's a cinch that she scores more bul