taken into Eda's arms. Janet was
immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the masculine
trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one of
those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues
come as naturally as sun or air. Passion, when sanctified by matrimony,
was her ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it,
having read about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never
having experienced deeply its discomforts. Sanctified or unsanctified,
Janet regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently broached the
subject she recoiled. Once Eda exclaimed:--"When you do fall in love,
Janet, you must tell me all about it, every word!"

Janet blushed hotly, and was silent. In Eda's mind such an affair was a
kind of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a
volcanic eruption to turn the world red. Such was the difference between
them.

Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or
sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra. Stereotyped on
Eda's face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was an
expression of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that vertical
line in her cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of white
teeth and red gums. It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom it
appeared as the logical reflection of what was passing on the screen; she
averted her glance from both, staring into her lap, filled with shame
that the relation between the sexes should be thus exposed to public
gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded.... There were, however,
marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and ships,--once a
fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic tongues of orange
flame leaping from tree to tree. The movies brought the world to Hampton,
the great world into which she longed to fare, brought the world to her!
Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets and muezzins from the
Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow resembling gilded beets
turned upside down; grey houses of parliament by the Thames, the Tower of
London, the Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal. Strange lands indeed, and
stranger peoples! booted Russians in blouses, naked Equatorial savages
tattooed and amazingly adorned, soldiers and sailors, presidents, princes
and emperors brought into such startling proximity one could easily
imagine one