nt so
tragically----"

"I want Kathleen. Do you hear?"

"Very well; I'll find her.... And, whatever you say or think, I _am_ in
love with you," he added fiercely.

His voice, his words, were meaningless; she was conscious only of the
heavy pulse in throat and temple, of the desire for her room and
darkness. Lights, music, the scent of dying flowers, laughter, men, all
had become abhorrent. Something within her lay bruised and stunned; and,
as never before, the vast and terrible phantom of her loneliness rose
like a nightmare to menace her.

Later Kathleen came and took her away.

CHAPTER IV

THE YEAR OF DISCRETION

Her first winter resembled, more or less, the first winter of the
average debutante.

Under the roof of the metropolitan social temple there was a niche into
which her forefathers had fitted. Within the confines of this she
expected, and was expected, to live and move and have her being, and
ultimately wing upward to her God, leaving the consecrated cubby-hole
reserved for her descendants.

She did what her sister debutantes did, and some things they did not do,
was asked where they were asked, decorated the same tier of boxes at the
opera, appeared in the same short-skirted entertainments of the Junior
League, saw what they saw, was seen where they were seen, chattered,
danced, and flirted with the same youths, was smitten by the popular
"dancing" man, convalesced in average time, smoked her first cigarette,
fell a victim to the handsome and horrid married destroyer, recovered
with a shock when, as usual, he overdid it, played at being engaged, was
kissed once or twice, adored Sembrich, listened ignorantly but with
intuitive shudders to her first scandals, sent flowers to Ethel
Barrymore, kept Lent with the pure fervour of a conscience troubled and
untainted, drove four in the coaching parade, and lunched afterward at
the Commonwealth Club, where her name was subsequently put up for
election.

Spectacular charities lured her from the Plaza to Sherry's, from
Sherry's to the St. Regis; church work beguiled her; women's suffrage,
led daintily in a series of circles by Fashion and Wealth, enlisted her
passive patronage. She even tried the slums, but the perfume was too
much for her.

All the small talk and epigrams of the various petty impinging circles
under the social dome passed into and out of her small ears--gossip,
epigrams, aphorisms, rumours, apropos surmises, asides, and off-stag