d by
Foreign Travel and study and these things are soon forgotten, my dear,
and if nervous young men will not admit like gentlemen that they are in
the wrong when only engaged what kind of husbands will they make when
married forever? And is not a broken engagement better than lifelong
unhappiness when there are so many too many sinful people divorcing each
other every day and all men who write for their living use stimulants,
my dear, such is literary history and my dearest have your cry out on
mother's shoulder."

The sweetish oil has risen about Nancy relentlessly--it is up to her
waist now and still it keeps talking and flowing and creeping higher.
Very soon when the fatter black soldier on the clock-face has only
hitched himself along a little, it will be over her head and the roving
Nancy, the sparkling Nancy, the Nancy that fell in love will be under it
like a calm body, never to rise or run or be kissed with light seeking
kisses on the soft of her throat again. There will only be a dignified
Nancy, a sensible Nancy, a Nancy going to Paris to study and be
successful, a Nancy who, sooner or later will marry "Some good, clean
man."

A little tinkle of chimes from the clock. Six minutes more. The Nancy
that was stands on tiptoe, every eager and tameless bit of her hoping,
hoping. If mother weren't there that Nancy would have been at the
telephone an hour ago in spite of young people's pride and old people's
self-respect and all the thousand and one knife-faced fetishes that all
the correct and common-sensible people hug close and worship because
they hurt.

She can see the train sliding out of the station. Ollie is in it and
his face is stiff with surprise and unforgiveness like the face of some
horrible stranger you went up to and spoke to by mistake, thinking he
was your friend. By the time the train is well started he will have
begun talking to that fluffy girl in the other half of the Pullman--no,
that isn't worthy, he wouldn't--but oh Ollie, Ollie!

Half an hour later the telephone rings. Nancy is finishing the breakfast
dishes--her hands jump as she hears it--a slippery plate slops back into
the water and as she dives after it she realizes painfully that the new
water is much too hot.

"What _is_ it, mother?" For an instant the Nancy who has no real
self-respect is talking again.

"Just a minute, Isabella. Mrs. Winters, dear. Don't you want to speak to
her?"

"Oh."

Then----

"Not right now. When