futile struggles or harassments.

The tonic effect of that resolution was really wonderful. She got her
color back--I mean more than just the pink bloom in her cheeks--and her
old, irresistible, wide slow smile. She'd never been so beautiful as she
was during the next six months.

People who thought they loved her before--Frederica for example, found
they hadn't really, until now. She dropped in on Eleanor Randolph one
day, after a morning spent with Rose, simply because she was bursting
with this idea and had to talk to somebody. That was very like
Frederica.

She found Eleanor doing her month's bills, but glad to shovel them into
her desk, light up a cigarette, and have a chat; a little rueful though,
when she found that Rose was to be the subject of it.

"She's perfectly wonderful," Frederica said. "There's a sort of look
about her ..."

"Oh, I know," Eleanor said. "We dined there last night."

"Well, didn't it just--get you?" insisted Frederica.

"It did," said Eleanor. "It also got Jim. He was still talking about her
when I went to sleep, about one o'clock. I don't a bit blame him for
being perfectly maudlin about her. As I say, I was a good deal that way
myself, though a half-hour's steady raving was enough for me. But poor
old Jim! She isn't one little bit crazy about him, either--unfortunately."

"_Un_fortunately!" thought Frederica. This was rather illuminating. The
Randolphs' love-match had been regarded as establishing a sort of
standard of excellence. But when you heard a woman trying to arrange
subsidiary romances for her husband, or lamenting the failure of them,
it meant, as a rule, that things were wearing rather thin. However, she
dismissed this speculation for a later time, and went back to Rose.

"I had been worrying about her, too;" she said. "Rodney was so funny
about her. _He_ was worried, I could see that. And he means the best in
the world, the dear. But he could be a dreadful brute, just in his
simplicity. Oh, I know! He and I were always rather special pals--more
than Harriet. But no man ever learned less from his sisters,--about
women, I mean. He's always been so big and healthy and even-minded, you
couldn't tell him anything, except what you could print right out in
black and white. So when you were feeling edgy and blue and miserable
you either kept out of his way or kept your troubles to yourself. He was
always easy to fool--there was that about it. If you wiped your eyes and
blew