black too much. The
psychological effect is not good for you."

With her knees on the floor and her back bent over the trunk into which
she was packing a dozen pairs of slippers wrapped in tissue paper,
Virginia turned her head and stared in bewilderment at her daughter,
whose classic profile showed like marble flushed with rose in the
lamplight.

"But at my time of life, dear? Why, I'm in my forty-sixth year."

"But forty-six is still young, mother. That was one of the greatest
mistakes women used to make--to imagine that they must be old as soon as
men ceased to make love to them. It was all due to the idea that men
admired only schoolgirls and that as soon as a woman stopped being
admired she had stopped living."

"But they didn't stop living really. They merely stopped fixing up."

"Oh, of course. They spent the rest of their lives in the storeroom or
the kitchen slaving for the comfort of the men they could no longer
amuse."

This so aptly described Virginia's own situation that her interest in
Lucy's trousseau faded abruptly, while a wave of heartsickness swept
over her. It was as if the sharp and searching light of truth had fallen
suddenly upon all the frail and lovely pretences by which she had helped
herself to live and to be happy. A terror of the preternatural insight
of youth made her turn her face away from Jenny's too critical eyes.

"But what else could they do, Jenny? They believed that it was right to
step back and make room for the young," she said, with a pitiful attempt
at justification of her exploded virtues.

"Oh, _mother_!" exclaimed Jenny still sweetly, "whoever heard of a man
of that generation stepping back to make room for anybody?"

"But men are different, darling. One doesn't expect them to give up like
women."

"Oh, mother!"--this time the sweetness had borrowed an edge of irony. It
was Science annihilating tradition, and the tougher the tradition, the
keener the blade which Science must apply.

"I can't help it, dear, it is the way I was taught. My darling mother
felt like that"--a tear glistened in her eye--"and I am too old to
change my way of thinking."

"Mother, mother, you silly pet!" Rising from her chair, Jenny put her
arms about her and kissed her tenderly. "You can't help being
old-fashioned, I know. You are not to blame for your ideas; it is Miss
Priscilla." Her voice grew stern with condemnation as she uttered the
name. "But don't you think you might try to see