teresting!" at intervals; and so they reached home, where Mary could
plead a headache and go to her room to battle it out alone.

She felt, too, that the town crier could truthfully announce that
milady was returning to tea gowns for an indefinite period. And she
felt a passionate hunger to be one of them. That women were going to
rejoice, the majority of them, to take off their lady-major uniforms,
stop driving tractors and wearing overalls, and with the precious
knowledge of the experience they would evolve quite a new-old
standard, as charming as lavender and lace and as old as Time--the
gentlewoman! They would no longer accentuate their ugliness with that
unlovely honesty of the feminist which has been quite as distressing
as the impossible Victorian lack of honesty and everlasting
concealment of vital things. They would no longer be feminists or
ladies, but gentlewomen who sew their own seam, who neither struggle
unseen nor flaunt their emotions in the face of sex psychologists.

And that both commercial nuns and Gorgeous Girls must be on the wane.
Yet it was too late for Mary Faithful.

* * * * *

For many reasons Steve stayed away from Mary. At intervals he sent her
flowers without a card, such a schoolboyish trick to do and yet so
harmless that Mary sent him no word of thanks or blame. She merely
dreamed her gentlewoman's dreams and did her work in the new office
with the same systematic ability as she had employed for Steve's
benefit, causing the new firm to beam with delight. She had an even
more imposing office than formerly, spread generously with fur rugs,
traps for the weak ankles of innocent callers. She was treated with
great respect. One time Steve came to see about some civic banquet in
which the head of Mary's new firm was concerned, and Mary made herself
close her door and begin dictating so as to appear to be occupied. The
next day he slipped a love letter into the bouquet of old-fashioned
flowers he selected for her benefit, and Mary forced herself to write
a card and forbid his continuing the attentions.

In March Gaylord Vondeplosshe telephoned Mary, about nine o'clock one
evening, that Trudy was quite ill and wanted to see her. Would Mary
mind coming over if he called in the roadster? There was a fearsome
tone in his voice which made Mary consent despite Luke's protests.

Gay was even more pale and weaker eyed than ever when he came into the
apartm