le does when the
magnet touches it." Miss Vance listened to her attentively. "Jean,"
she said, after a pause, "are you sure that it is Lucy whom the prince
wishes to marry?"

"It is not I," said Miss Hassard promptly. "He has thought of me
several times--he has weighed my qualifications. But the man is in
love with Lucy as honestly as a ploughman could be. Don't you think
I've tough luck?" she said, resting her elbow on the table and her chin
on her palm, her keen gray eyes following Miss Dunbar and her lover as
they loitered under the shadow of the church. "I am as young as Lucy.
I have a better brain and as big a dot. But her lovers make her life a
burden, and I never have had one. Just because our noses and chins are
made up differently!"

"Oh, my dear!" said Clara anxiously. "I never thought you cared for
that kind of success!"

"I'm only human," Jean laughed. "Of course I'm an artist. I'm going
to paint a great picture some day that all the world shall go mad
about. Of Eve. I'll put all the power of all women into her. But in
the meantime I'd like to see one man turn pale and pant before me as
the fat little prince does when Lucy snubs him."

"Lucy is very hard to please," complained Miss Vance. "She snubs Mr.
Perry--naturally. But the prince--why should she not marry the prince?"

"Your generation," said Jean, smiling slyly, "used to think that an
unreasonable whim called love was a good thing in marriage----"

"But why should she not love the prince? He is honorable and kind, and
quite passable as to looks---- Can there be any one else?" turning
suddenly to Jean.

Miss Hassard looked at her a moment, hesitating. "Your cousin George
used to be Lucy's type of a hero----"

"Why! the man is married!" Miss Vance stood up, her lean face
reddening. "Jean! You surprise me! That kind of talk--it's indecent!
It is that loose American idea of marriage that ends in hideous divorce
cases. But for one of my girls----"

"It is a very old idea," said Jean calmly.

"David loved another man's wife. Mind you, I don't accuse Lucy of
loving any body, but when the needle has once touched the magnet it
answers to its call ever after."

Miss Vance vouchsafed no answer. She walked away across the Platz,
jerking her bonnet strings into a knot. Jean was one of the New Women!
Her opinions stuck out on every side like Briareus' hundred elbows!
You could not come near her without being jabbed by them.