ivacious beauty, three times widowed, well-known in fashionable
circles, etc." One paper published a photograph of them riding side by
side. After that sceptics who had not seen for themselves, were
persuaded.

It was a mad world--a world in which it was not safe to be censorious.
The lid was off the conventions. Every one was shouting for
happiness--happiness at all costs. When they could not get it for the
asking, they were taking it without thought of law or penalties. There
were few who could afford to sit in judgment and many who preferred to
laugh. The day of authority was over. Traditions were no longer
respected. While the war was on, men and women had been drilled into
dumb acquiescence; now that the drilling was abolished, they had become
a mob, avid, leaderless and uproarious.

Tabs came to realize that he was not alone in his lost sense of
direction. The right to live had been restored, but neither individuals
nor nations were sure what they wanted to do with it. After having been
as one in their sacrificial certainty, they had arrived at a cross-roads
where there was no policeman to take charge. They had broken up into
little groups, gathered about their own vociferous stump-orators. The
result was babel. Of orators there were a plenty. They abused one
another across the Irish Sea. They tried to shout one another down
across the Atlantic Ocean. But the hammer-head men of righteousness were
gone. After the apocalyptic splendor of mailed knights of Christ
charging stern-faced down to Armageddon, the results of victory had been
consigned to the weakling care of a race of talkers.

And yet there was music and laughter. Spring rushed on. Feet that had
marched, now moved in the rhythm of the dance. Theaters were crowded.
Jazz-bands clashed. There were endless processions. Youth beckoned.
Chestnut bloom grew white and fell in flurries. Women were no less
beautiful. The sun shone thunderously.

If Tabs were foolish, which he did not concede, all the world was his
companion in foolishness. Blindly and gropingly he was still going in
search of his kingdom. He ignored the gossip which his championship of
Maisie had called forth. He despised it. It made him the more
compassionate toward her--the more determined to help her to weather
the storm. Well-meaning friends undertook to warn him. "She's most
beautiful and charming. And she's Lady Dawn's sister, of course.
But----Well, to put it frankly, a woman who's been m