iked. "As it happens, it's about the one thing I
couldn't."

"You couldn't? Why not?"

"Because you're divorced. They won't have divorced Ambassadresses."

"They won't? Why not, I'd like to know?"

"Well, I guess the court ladies are afraid there'd be too many pretty
women in the Embassies," he answered jocularly.

She burst into an angry laugh, and the blood flamed up into her face.
"I never heard of anything so insulting!" she cried, as if the rule had
been invented to humiliate her.

There was a noise of motors backing and advancing in the court, and she
heard the first voices on the stairs. She turned to give herself a last
look in the glass, saw the blaze of her rubies, the glitter of her hair,
and remembered the brilliant names on her list.

But under all the dazzle a tiny black cloud remained. She had learned
that there was something she could never get, something that neither
beauty nor influence nor millions could ever buy for her. She could
never be an Ambassador's wife; and as she advanced to welcome her first
guests she said to herself that it was the one part she was really made
for.

THE END

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