ynthetics do. I dress like the Synthesis, and I think like it, and I
act like it. As soon as I get home in the afternoon, I have to be of
the world worldly. I put on a Worth frock, and mamma would make me put
on a Worth spirit, if she could. I do my best to conform, because it's
the bargain, and I'll keep my word if it kills me. _Now_ you see what a
double life I lead! If I could only be steeped in hopeless poverty to
the lips! If I could have a room like this, even! Sometimes I'm so
bewildered by the twofold existence I'm leading, I don't really know
what I'm saying. Those your things, of course?" She sprang from
Cornelia's trunk, which she had sank down upon again, and swiftly
traversed the sketches Cornelia had pinned about the wall. "What touch!
Yes, you merely have to live on, to be anything you like. It'll do
itself for _you_. Well, I suppose you'll have to see her." She turned
about to Cornelia with an air of deprecation. "Mamma, you know. She's
down stairs waiting for us. She thinks it right to come with me always.
I dare say it is. She isn't so very bad, you know. Only she insists
upon knowing all the girls I take a fancy to, herself. You needn't be
afraid of her."

"I don't know why I should be afraid of anybody," said Cornelia.

The darker corner of the long parlor was occupied by a young couple in
the earnest inquiry into each other's psychological peculiarities which
marks a stage of the passion of love. It obliged them to get very close
together, where they sat, she on a lounge and he in the chair, which he
kept pulling nearer and nearer; they fulfilled these conditions and
exchanged their observations with a freedom that ignored the presence
of the lady sitting somewhat severely upright between the two long,
front windows, exactly midway of the dingy lace curtains, trained
fan-wise on the carpet. They were not disturbed when Cornelia and
Charmian appeared; the young lady continued to dangle the tassel of a
cushion through her fingers, and the young man leaned toward her with
his face in his hand, and his elbow sunk in the arm of the lounge; but
the other lady rose at once and came quickly forward, as if escaping
from them. Beside the tall girls she looked rather little, and she was
decidedly blonde against their brunette color. She wore a veil that
came just between her upper and her lower lip, and that stirred lightly
when she spoke. She was dressed with the same authoritative fashion as
Charmian, but n