g general traffic manager of one
of the southwestern railways entering the city, and a gentleman of
taste and culture and some wealth; his wife an ambitious nobody. There
were the Walter Rysam Cottons, Cotton being a wholesale coffee-broker,
but more especially a local social litterateur; his wife a graduate of
Vassar. There were the Norrie Simmses, Simms being secretary and
treasurer of the Douglas Trust and Savings Company, and a power in
another group of financial people, a group entirely distinct from that
represented by Addison and Rambaud.

Others included the Stanislau Hoecksemas, wealthy furriers; the Duane
Kingslands, wholesale flour; the Webster Israelses, packers; the
Bradford Candas, jewelers. All these people amounted to something
socially. They all had substantial homes and substantial incomes, so
that they were worthy of consideration. The difference between Aileen
and most of the women involved a difference between naturalism and
illusion. But this calls for some explanation.

To really know the state of the feminine mind at this time, one would
have to go back to that period in the Middle Ages when the Church
flourished and the industrious poet, half schooled in the facts of
life, surrounded women with a mystical halo. Since that day the maiden
and the matron as well has been schooled to believe that she is of a
finer clay than man, that she was born to uplift him, and that her
favors are priceless. This rose-tinted mist of romance, having nothing
to do with personal morality, has brought about, nevertheless, a
holier-than-thou attitude of women toward men, and even of women toward
women. Now the Chicago atmosphere in which Aileen found herself was
composed in part of this very illusion. The ladies to whom she had
been introduced were of this high world of fancy. They conceived
themselves to be perfect, even as they were represented in religious
art and in fiction. Their husbands must be models, worthy of their high
ideals, and other women must have no blemish of any kind. Aileen,
urgent, elemental, would have laughed at all this if she could have
understood. Not understanding, she felt diffident and uncertain of
herself in certain presences.

Instance in this connection Mrs. Norrie Simms, who was a satellite of
Mrs. Anson Merrill. To be invited to the Anson Merrills' for tea,
dinner, luncheon, or to be driven down-town by Mrs. Merrill, was
paradise to Mrs. Simms. She loved to recite t