interest that youth can claim, she fights like a Trojan to retain her
youthful beauty. The bravery with which she is now holding old age at
arm's length, and defying it to embrace her is perfectly amazing. It
shows her infinite good taste; it shows how deeply she has understood
the difference between youth and age. It is one of the most thrilling
things I have ever witnessed."

Leonetta laughed ecstatically. "Yes, yes, I see!" she exclaimed. "You
put it in a new light. Bravo, old Peachy!--you make me feel I want to
run home and kiss her." And then she added, as if it were an
afterthought: "Except that she hates being kissed."

Cleopatra was thoughtful. "Yes, I understand all that," she said after a
while; "I have understood that for some time,--at least dimly. But then,
this local interest which you say old age excites, this local or
domestic appeal which it makes,--will not Edith ever feel that?"

"Ah, don't you see, Miss Delarayne," Lord Henry replied, "this local
interest, this domestic interest on which old age depends, has to be
very strong, very intense, very highly concentrated, to make any one as
tasteful as your mother gladly relinquish the other interest."

"Very, very intense," Cleopatra repeated. "Do you mean that in Baby--I
mean Leo--and myself it is not sufficiently intense?"

Leonetta looked solemnly up into Lord Henry's face to catch every word
of his reply, and in doing so even forgot to notice that there were
young men on the road observing her.

"Don't misunderstand me," Lord Henry pleaded. "I do not wish to imply
that you two girls do not love and cherish your mother. In fact, as I
have just been saying, the zeal with which you help her in every way to
achieve the end she wishes to achieve is most highly creditable. But,
have you ever known, have you ever witnessed at close quarters, the
worship of a devoted son for his mother? Have you ever been anywhere
near two people, mother and son, who have been bound by that most unique
and most passionate of affections, which has made the local interest of
old age seem sufficiently vast and full to reconcile the mother to a
happy relinquishment of that other interest,--the interest the world
feels in youth?"

Still Leonetta gazed into Lord Henry's face, and still Cleopatra kept
her eyes thoughtfully on the ground.

"Because, I remind you," Lord Henry concluded, "that this domestic
interest, since it is so circumscribed and restricted, has to be
prop