e, classic church; adored the padre; and for
about one day planned to scorn Panama Methodism and become a Catholic,
after which day she forgot about Methodism and Catholicism. She also
accompanied Mrs. Lawrence to a ceremony much less impressive and much
less easily forgotten--to a meeting with a man.

Mrs. Lawrence never talked about her husband, but in this reticence she
was not joined by Rose Dawn or Jennie Cassavant. Jennie maintained that
the misfitted Mr. Lawrence was alive, very much so; that Esther and he
weren't even divorced, but merely separated. The only sanction Mrs.
Lawrence ever gave to this report was to blurt out one night: "Keep up
your belief in the mysticism of love and all that kind of sentimental
sex stuff as long as you can. You'll lose it some day fast enough. Me, I
know that a woman needs a man just the same as a man needs a woman--and
just as darned unpoetically. Being brought up a Puritan, I never can
quite get over the feeling that I oughtn't to have anything to do with
men--me as I am--but believe me it isn't any romantic ideal. I sure want
'em."

Mrs. Lawrence continually went to dinners and theaters with men; she
told Una all the details, as women do, from the first highly proper
handshake down in the pure-minded hall of the Home Club at eight, to the
less proper good-night kiss on the dark door-step of the Home Club at
midnight. But she was careful to make clear that one kiss was all she
ever allowed, though she grew dithyrambic over the charming, lonely men
with whom she played--a young doctor whose wife was in a madhouse; a
clever, restrained, unhappy old broker.

Once she broke out: "Hang it! I want love, and that's all there is to
it--that's crudely all there ever is to it with any woman, no matter how
much she pretends to be satisfied with mourning the dead or caring for
children, or swatting a job or being religious or anything else. I'm a
low-brow; I can't give you the economics of it and the spiritual
brotherhood and all that stuff, like Mamie Magen. But I know women want
a man and love--all of it."

Next evening she took Una to dinner at a German restaurant, as chaperon
to herself and a quiet, insistent, staring, good-looking man of forty.
While Mrs. Lawrence and the man talked about the opera, their eyes
seemed to be defying each other. Una felt that she was not wanted. When
the man spoke hesitatingly of a cabaret, Una made excuse to go home.

Mrs. Lawrence did not return t