layed to perfection in the bolder civilizations. It
was all that gave vitality to the general game of society. I had no
children; my establishment was run by a major domo; it bore little
resemblance to a home. It was the brilliant artificial existence of a
great lady, young, beautiful, and wealthy, in Europe before
nineteen-fourteen. Of course that phase of life was suspended in Europe
during the war. All the women I knew or heard of worked as hard as I
did. Whether that terrible interregnum left its indelible seal on them,
or whether they have rebounded to the old life, where conditions are less
agonizing than in Vienna, I do not know."

She paused a moment, and Clavering unconsciously braced himself. Her
initial revelation had left the deeper and more personal part of him
stunned, and he was listening to her with a certain detachment. So far
she had revealed little that Dinwiddie had not told him already, and as
he knew that this brief recapitulation of her earlier life was not
prompted by vanity, he could only wonder if it were the suggestive
preface to that secret volume at which Dinwiddie had hinted more than
once.

As she continued silent, he got suddenly to his feet. "I'll walk up and
down a bit, if you don't mind," he muttered. "I'm rather--ah--getting
rather cramped."

"Do," she said indifferently.

"Please go on. I am deeply interested."

She continued in a particularly level voice while he strode unevenly up
and down: "Of course the time came when ugly memories faded, my buoyant
youth asserted itself and I wanted love. And when a woman feels a crying
need to love as well as to be loved, her whole being a peremptory demand,
unsatisfied romance quickening, she is not long finding the man. I had
many to choose from. I made my choice and was happy for a time.
Although I had been brought up in the severest respectability--just
recall Jane Oglethorpe, Mrs. Vane, Mrs. Ruyler, and you will be able to
reconstruct the atmosphere--several of the women I had known as a girl
had lovers, it seemed to me that American women came to Europe for no
other purpose, and I was now living at the fountain-head of polite
license. Not that I made any apologies to myself. I should have taken a
lover if I had wanted one had virtue been the fashion. And the contract
with my husband had been dissolved by mutual consent. The only thing
that rebelled was my pride. I hated stepping down from my pedestal."

Clavering