is life, except
through knowing people? Even an artist must make himself seen.... So she
considered that in urging her husband to become part of the Bunker
machine, she was acting wisely for both,--nay, for all three of the
family, for should not Virginia's future already be taken into account?

The wife of the Fiction Editor, with whom she had become intimate in her
rapid way, confirmed this view of things. Hazel Fredericks fascinated
Milly much more than the aggressive Mrs. Billman, perhaps because she
went out of her way to be nice to the artist's wife. Milly had not yet
convinced the wife of the Responsible Editor that she was important, and
she never wasted time over "negative" people. The dark little Hazel
Fredericks, with her muddy eyes and rather thick lips, was a more subtle
woman than Mrs. Billman and took the pains to cultivate "possibilities."
She had Milly at lunch one day and listened attentively to all her
dubitations about her husband's career. Then she pronounced:--

"Stanny was like that. He wanted to write stories. They are pretty good
stories, too, but you know there's not much sale for the merely good
thing. And unsuccessful art of any kind is hardly worth while, is
it?... When we were first married, he had an idea of going away somewhere
and living on nothing at all until he had made a name. But that is not
the way things are done, is it?"

She paused to laugh sympathetically and look at Milly, as if she must
understand what foolish creatures men often were and how wives like
Milly and herself had to save them from their follies.

"Of course," she continued, "if he had had Reinhard's luck, it would
have been another thing. Clive Reinhard's stuff is just rot, of course,
but people like it and he gets all kinds of prices."

She took a cigarette and throwing herself comfortably on a divan blew a
silvery wreath upwards. Meditatively she summed up the philosophy she
held,--

"It's better to stay with the game and make the most you can out of it,
don't you think so?"

Milly agreed.

"And _Bunker's_ is a very good game, if you haven't any money."

Milly admired her new friend's cleverness. She was the kind who knew how
to manage life,--her own life especially,--and get what she wanted out
of the game. Milly began to have great respect for that sort of women
and wished she were more like them. She felt that Hazel Fredericks never
did things waywardly: she always had a well-calculated purpose hidd