h that form,
to impress myself with her every attitude and gesture, her color, her
movement, and then I shall imagine the form under the influence of
passion. Every detail will tell. I do not find unimportant the tie of her
shoe. The picture will be life."

"But suppose, Mr. Bass, when you come to speak with her, you find that
she has no ideas, and talks slang."

"All the better. It shows what we are, what our society is. And besides,
Mrs. Henderson, nearly everybody has the capacity of being wicked; that
is to say, of expressing emotion."

"You take a gloomy view, Mr. Bass."

"I take no view, Mrs. Henderson. My ambition is to record. It will not
help matters by pretending that people are better than they are."

"Well, Mr. Bass, you may be quite right, but I am not going to let you
spoil my enjoyment of this lovely scene," said Margaret, moving away. Mr.
Bass watched her until she disappeared, and then entered in his notebook
a phrase for future use, "The prosperous propriety of a pretty
plutocrat." He was gathering materials for his forthcoming book, "The
Last Sigh of the Prude."

The whole world knows how delightful Lenox is. It even has a club where
the men can take refuge from the exactions of society, as in the city.
The town is old enough to have "histories"; there is a romance attached
to nearly every estate, a tragedy of beauty, and money, and
disappointment; great writers have lived here, families whose names were
connected with our early politics and diplomacy; there is a tradition of
a society of wit and letters, of women whose charms were enhanced by a
spice of adventure, of men whose social brilliancy ended in misanthropy.
All this gave a background of distinction to the present gayety, luxury,
and adaptation of the unsurpassed loveliness of nature to the refined
fashion of the age.

Here, if anywhere, one could be above worry, above the passion of envy;
for did not every new "improvement" and every new refinement in living
add to the importance of every member of this favored community? For
Margaret it was all a pageant of beauty. The Misses Arbuser talked about
the quality of the air, the variety of the scenery, the exhilaration of
the drives, the freedom from noise and dust, the country quiet. There
were the morning calls, the intellectual life of the reading clubs, the
tennis parties, the afternoon teas, combined with charming drives from
one elegant place to another; the siestas, the idle swing