ctive and so nice.... And so many
of them are merciless.... I suppose you thought you loved him."

"Y--yes."

"We all think that, I suppose," said Valerie, thoughtfully.

"Other girls have thought it of Penrhyn Cardemon."

"Other _girls?_"

"Yes."

Valerie's face expressed bewilderment.

"I didn't know that there were really such men."

Rita closed her disillusioned eyes.

"Plenty," she said wearily.

"I don't care to believe that."

"You may believe it, Valerie. Men are almost never single-minded; women
are--almost always. You see what chance for happiness we have? But it's
the truth, and the world has been made that way. It's a man's world,
Valerie. I don't think there's much use for us to fight against it....
She sat very silent for a while, close to Valerie, her hot face on the
younger girl's shoulder. Suddenly she straightened up and dried her eyes
naively on the sleeve of her kimona.

"Goodness!" she said, "I almost forgot!"

And a moment later Valerie heard her at the telephone:

"Is that you, John?"

* * * * *

"Have you remembered to take your medicine?"

* * * * *

"How perfectly horrid of you! Take it at once! It's the one in the brown
bottle--six drops in a wineglass of water--"

CHAPTER XII

Mrs. Hind-Willet, born to the purple--or rather entitled to a narrow
border of discreet mauve on all occasions of ceremony in Manhattan, was
a dreamer of dreams. One of her dreams concerned her hyphenated husband,
and she put him away; another concerned Penrhyn Cardemon; and she woke
up. But the persistent visualisation, which had become obsession, of a
society to be formed out of the massed intellects of Manhattan
regardless of race, morals, or previous condition of social servitude--a
gentle intellectual affinity which knew no law of art except individual
inspiration, haunted her always. And there was always her own set to
which she could retreat if desirable.

She had begun with a fashionable and semi-fashionable nucleus which
included Mrs. Atherstane, the Countess d'Enver, Latimer Varyck, Olaf
Dennison, and Pedro Carrillo, and then enlarged the circle from those
perpetual candidates squatting anxiously upon the social step-ladder all
the way from the bottom to the top.

The result was what Ogilvy called intellectual local option; and though
he haunted this agglomeration at times, particularly when temporarily
smitten