a fool but I'm not
a damn fool, as James used to say. What good would it do me to look
forty? I had some looks left at that age but with no use for them as
women go. I'd have less now. But Mary was always lucky--a daughter of
the gods. It's just like her damned luck to have that discovery made
in her time and while she is still young enough to profit by it,
besides being as free as when she was Mary Ogden. Now, God knows what
devilment she'll be up to. What she wants she'll have and the devil
take the consequences." She patted his hand. "Go and sit down, Lee.
I've a good deal more to say."

Clavering returned to his seat with no sense of the old chair's
comfort, and she went on in a moment.

"The unfairness of it as I looked at that old witch in the glass that
had reflected my magnificent youth, seemed to me unendurable. I had
lived a virtuous and upright life. I knew damned well she hadn't. I
had done my duty by the race and my own and my husband's people, and I
had brought up my sons to be honorable and self-respecting men,
whatever their failings, and my daughters in the best traditions of
American womanhood. They are model wives and mothers, and they have
made no weak-kneed concessions to these degenerate times. They bore me
but I'd rather they did that than disgrace me. Mary never had even one
child, although her husband must have wanted an heir. I have lived a
life of duty--duty to my family traditions, my husband, my children, my
country, and to Society: she one of self-indulgence and pleasure and
excitement, although I'm not belittling the work she did during the
war. But noblesse oblige. What else could she do? And now, she'll be
at it again. She'll have the pick of our young men--I don't know
whether it's all tragic or grotesque. She'll waste no time on those
men who loved her in her youth--small blame to her. Who wants to
coddle old men? They've all got something the matter with 'em. . . .
But she'll have love--love--if not here--and thank God, she's not
remaining long--then elsewhere and wherever she chooses. Love! I too
once took a fierce delight in making men love me. It seems a thousand
years ago. What if I should try to make a man fall in love with me
today? I'd be rushed off by my terrified family to a padded cell."

"Well--Jane----"

"Don't 'well Jane' me! You'd jump out of the window if I suddenly
began to make eyes at you. I could rely on your manners. You wouldn't