y, excusing her
frivolous little self, adoring the fragile, foolish soul of her. At
least it would be worth while trying.

"I can get a construction set for six dollars," Luke was saying. "That
will make the bridge models I told you about last week. I'm going to
get one."

"Yes, dear, I would," she punctuated the conversation recklessly, and
then another crowd swept about them and more elegant little cabs with
more Gorgeous Girls and their cavaliers whirled by. Mary hated her
stupid sophistry about commercial nuns, novitiates and all, her plain
gray-eyed spinster self doomed to a Persian cat and a bonus at sixty.
Empty, colourless--damnable!

She realized that she had merely given herself an anaesthetic, just as
Steve had done, one of unreality and indifference, and that no one
stays dormant under its power for all time. That all so-called
commercial nuns try hard to convince themselves that watching the
procession pass by is quite the best way of all. Yet there is scant
truth or satisfaction in the statement. At some time or other the
hunger for being loved crashes through the spinster's brave little
platform, the hunger for becoming necessary to someone in other ways
than writing letters or adding figures--to be home, beside the hearth,
keeping the fires burning, with woes and cares and monotonous
incidents of such a narrowed horizon. It was for this we were created,
Mary Faithful told herself--to be the dreamers and the ballast and the
inspiration of the race. And if commercial nuns have managed to tell
themselves otherwise--well, who shall be brutal enough to cry "I spy"
on their little secret? She understood now the abnormal restlessness
that she had seen in others of her friends--the marriages with men
beneath them in class who earned but half what they did; unwise
flirtations, even the sordid things that occasionally creep into the
horizon. And she blamed none of them for any of it.

She knew now that should the chance come she would want to be a
Gorgeous Girl. Gorgeous Girls have the faculty of being loved, even if
they do not merit the emotion. Tailor-made nuns only love, and finally
set their consciences to work to convince themselves that a new firm
and more severe collars will be the best way to forget.

Luke was still talking about the construction set and the new
invention and patent rights and heavy wool sweater with a bean cap for
the summer vacation. Mary was saying: "Yes, of course," and "How
in