to the head
and giving a decided Brunnhilde effect. "I hate duplicates; I always
want something different and novel."

"It's a good thing I gave you a check," said her father.

"Yes, because Gay can always find me something"--brightening. "And
tell me, how is the salon fresco coming on?"

Her father held up his hands in protest. "Ask something easy. A mob of
workmen and sleek gentlemen that tiptoe about like undertakers'
assistants--that's all I know. But not one of them touches my room!"

"All right, papa." She kissed him prettily. "And as I'm dead for sleep
and aunty is snoring in her chair, suppose you wake her up and run
along?"

Summoning Aunt Belle, who was approaching the Mrs. Skewton stage of
wanting a continuous rose-curtain effect, Beatrice stood at the window
with unusual affection to wave the last of her guests a good-bye.

She sat up until daylight, to her maid's dismay, still in her
remodelled wedding gown. She was thinking chaotic, rebellious,
ridiculous nothings, punctuated with uneven ragged thoughts about
matching gloves to gowns or getting potted goose livers at the
East-Side store Trudy had just recommended. The general trend of her
reverie was the dissatisfaction not over this first year of
married life but at the twenty-seven years as a Gorgeous Girl, the
disappointment at not having some vital impelling thing to do,
which should of course supply a good time as well as a desirable
achievement. The inherited energy was demanding an outlet. She
recalled the evening's entertainment--a paper chase with every
room left littered and disordered, her lace flounce badly torn,
her head thumping with pain, the latest dances, the inane music, the
scandal whispered between numbers, the elaborate supper and favours,
the elaborate farewells--and the elaborate lies about the charm of
the hostess and the good time.

She began to envy Steve as well as Trudy, Steve in his hotel busy with
Labour delegates, wrangling, demanding, threatening, winning or losing
as the case might be. She, too, must do something. She had finished
with another series of adventures--that of being a mad butterfly. It
was shelved with the months of a romantic, parasitical existence
misnaming jealous monopoly as love, an existence which all at once
seemed as long ago as another lifetime.

She would now be an advanced woman, intellectual, daring; she would
allow her stunted abilities to have definite expression. Either she
would find