ey were a little
pompous, but this was less innate than acquired; and she knew that below
they were worth while. She had come to the conclusion that successful
actors and actresses were the only people in America who spoke English
fluently and correctly.

Yes, she ate in the kitchen; but she would have been a fit subject for
the fastidious Fragonard. Kitty was naturally an exquisite. Everything
about her was dainty, her body and her mind. The background of pans and
dishes, gas range and sink did not absorb Kitty; her presence here in
the morning lifted everything out of the rut of commonplace and created
an atmosphere that was ornamental. Pink peignoir and turquoise-blue
boudoir cap, silk petticoat and stockings and adorable little slippers.
No harm to tell the secret! Kitty was educating herself for a husband.
She knew that if she acquired the habit of daintiness at breakfast
before marriage it would become second nature after marriage. Moreover,
she was determined that it should be tremendous news that would cause a
newspaper to intervene. She had all the confidence in the world in her
mirror.

She got her breakfast this morning, singing. She was happy. She had
found a door out of monotony; theatrical drama had given way to the
living. She had opened the book of adventure and she was going straight
through to finis. That there was an undertow of the sinister escaped her
or she ignored it.

In all high-strung Irish souls there is a bit of the old wife, the
foreteller; the gift of prescience; and Kitty possessed this in a mild
degree. Something held her here, when for a dozen reasons she should
have gone elsewhere.

She strained the coffee, humming a tune out of The Mikado, the revival
of which she had seen lately:

My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time
To make the punishment fit the crime.
The punishment fit the crime.
And make the prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment.
Of innocent merriment!

And there you were! To make the punishment fit the crime. Wall in the
Bolsheviki, the I.W.W.'s, the Red Socialist, the anarchists--and let
them try it for ten years. Those left would be glad enough to embrace
democracy and sanity. The poor benighted things, to imagine that they
were going forward there in Russia! What kind of mentality was it that
could conceive a bles