ess's heart for a multitude of reasons. "Gay
never amounted to anything until we were married"--she paused for this
to take full effect--"and I enjoy playing the game. I have grown fond
of makeshifts and make-believes and hedging, bluffing, stalling,
jumping mental hurdles--it's fun--it keeps you alive and never
weighing more than a hundred and ten pounds."

Trudy rose to go. She was a _chic_ little vixen in a fantastic
costume of black velvet with a jacket of blush pink. No one but Trudy
could have worn such a thing--a semi-Dick-Whittington effect--and have
gotten away with it. Though she was physically very tired from sewing
late the night before, and mal-nourished because she was too indolent
to bother to cook, Trudy looked quite fit for a long stretch of hard
running.

"Why don't you diet seriously?" she purred. "It's only right for your
true friends to tell you. The double chin is permanent, I'm afraid."
She shook her shapely little head, to Beatrice's inward rage.

As Beatrice sat looking up at this impertinent little person she
suddenly became angered to think she had ever bothered with an
ex-office girl or permitted Gaylord to coax her into being nice to his
wife. And if this impossible person could bring Gaylord into the ranks
of prosperity in a short time, making everyone accept her, what
couldn't she, Beatrice O'Valley, do with Gay if she tried--seriously
tried? He would not linger beside Trudy if Beatrice gave him to
understand there was a place for him at her own hearth. She knew
Gaylord too well; he suddenly assumed the figurative form of a goal,
as she had once assumed to Steve--a play pastime--in the true sense. A
real man would not play off property doll in the hands of any woman,
not excepting his own wife; which Beatrice realized. Living with a
cave man had taught her many things. Yet it would be rare fun to have
a property doll all one's own, different from the impersonal, harmless
herd of boys and poets, a really innocent pastime if you considered it
in the eyes of man-written law. What a lark--to switch Gay from this
cheap, red-haired little woman, dominate his life, suddenly assert
her starved abilities, and make him become far greater than anything
Trudy had ever been able to do! It would cause such a jolly row and
excitement and pep everyone up. Pet and flatter him and show Trudy
that after all she had only been an incompetent clerk in Steve's
office!

"Perhaps I will diet," was all she sai