t, 1914!
I _must_ let the girl with the letter wait while I tell you the story,
in case you've not heard the true version.

While she hung upon my decision, and I gazed at Lorillard's signature
(worth guineas as an autograph), my mind raced back along the years.

Oh, that gorgeous spring before the war!

I wasn't "_out_"; but somehow I contrived to be "_in_." That is, in all
the things that I'd have died rather than miss.

We were absurdly poor, but Grandmother knew everyone; and that April,
while she was looking for a town house and arranging to present me, we
stayed with the Duchess of Stane. Her daughter, Lady June, was _the_
girl in Society just then. She had been The Girl for several years. She
was the prettiest, the most original, and the most daring one in her
set. She wasn't twenty-three, but she'd picked up the most extraordinary
reputation! I should think there could hardly have been more interest in
the doings of "professional beauties" in old days than was taken in
hers. No illustrated weekly was complete without her newest portrait
done by the photographer of the minute; no picture Daily existed that
wouldn't pay well for a snapshot of Lady June Dana, even with a foot out
of focus, or a hand as big as her head! And she _loved_ it all! She
lived, lived every minute! It didn't seem as if there could be a world
without June.

I was only a flapper, but I worshipped at the shrine, and the goddess
didn't mind being worshipped. She used to let me perch on her bed when
she took her morning tea, looking a dream in a rosebud-wreathed bit of
tulle called a boudoir cap, and a nighty like the first outline sketch
for a ballgown. She reeled off yards of stuff for my benefit about the
men who loved her (their name was legion!), and among others was Robert
Lorillard.

All the clever people who "did" things came to Stane House, provided
they were good to look at and interesting in themselves. Lorillard was
there nearly every Sunday for luncheon, and at other times, too. I
couldn't help staring at him, though I knew it was rude, for he was so
handsome, so--almost divine!

One laughs at writers who make their heroes "Greek statues," but really
Lorillard _was_ like the Apollo Belvedere, in the Vatican: those perfect
features, that high yet winning air (someone has said) "of the greatest
statue that ever was a gentleman, the greatest gentleman that ever was a
statue."

I think June met Lorillard away from home often: