emerald she wore last night?"

"Fake. I know the clerk at the Synthetic Jewelry Company had it made up
for her. She's cheap, I tell you. Promiscuous. Who ever heard of anybody
standing back of her? She knocks around. She sells her old clothes to
Tessie, my manicurist. I've got a line on her. She's cheap."

Kitty, who lay with her face under a white mud of cold cream and her
little mouth merely a hole, turned on her elbow.

"We can't all be top-notchers, Hester," she said. "You're hard as
nails."

"I guess I am, but you've got to be to play this game. The ones who
aren't end up by stuffing the keyhole and turning on the gas. You've got
to play it hard or not at all. If you've got the name, you might as well
have the game."

"If I had it to do over again--well, there would be one more
wife-and-mother role being played in this little old world, even if I
had to play it on a South Dakota farm."

"'Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well,' I used to write in a
copy book. Well, that's the way I feel about this. To me, anything is
worth doing to escape the cotton stockings and lisle next to your skin.
I admit I never sit down and _think_. You know, sit down and take stock
of myself. What's the use thinking? Live! Yes," mused Hester, her arms
in a wreath over her head, "I think I'd do it all over again. There's
not been so many, at that. Three. The first was a salesman. He'd have
married me, but I couldn't see it on six thousand a year. Nice fellow,
too--an easy spender in a small way, but I couldn't see a future to
ladies' neckwear. I hear he made good later in munitions. Al was a
pretty good sort, too, but tight. How I hate tightness! I've been pretty
lucky in the long run, I guess."

"Did I say 'hard as nails'?" said Kitty, grotesquely fitting a cigarette
in the aperture of her mouth. "I apologize. Why, alongside of you a
piece of flint is morning cereal. Haven't you ever had a love affair?
I've been married twice--that's how chicken hearted I can be. Haven't
you ever pumped a little faster just because a certain some one walked
into the room?"

"Once."

"Once what?"

"I liked a fellow. Pretty much. A blond. Say, he was blond! I always
think to myself, Kit, next to Gerald, you've got the bluest eyes under
heaven. Only, his didn't have any dregs."

"Thanks, dearie."

"I sometimes wonder about Gerald. I ought to drive over while we're out
here. Poor old Gerald Fishback!"

"Sweet name--'Fishback.' No wond