verything that's done nowadays, because the Greeks used up all the
ideas first?" asked Davison.

"Not at all. Nature conducts a vast renovating and cleaning
establishment, and whenever any old ideas look the least bit frayed or
soiled around the edges, pop, in they go, and come out French
dry-cleaned and as fresh as ever. They're sent home in a spick-span box
and you couldn't tell 'em from new."

"If we don't get anything new I hope that we, at least, get rid of some
of the old things--fears and superstitions," said Madeline. "Things that
are holy rites in one age are so apt to be holy frights in the next."

"Say, did you ever go down the streets of Boston and notice the number
of signs of palmists and astrologers and vacuum cures?" exclaimed
Davison. "But perhaps it ain't fair to take Boston for a standard."

Ellery, a true New Englander, stared at him in astonishment, as one who
heard sacred things lightly spoken of.

"Most of us can see how funny we are," Davison pursued.

"Can we?" murmured Dick.

"But Boston," he went on calmly, "has lost her sense of humor. She peers
down at everything she does and says, 'This is very serious.' That's why
she takes astrologers in earnest. They're in Boston. Anyway, I think you
were mighty sensible to come back to us, Miss Elton, rather than to stay
in the unmarried state, alias Massachusetts. A girl really has a much
better chance in the West."

"Yes, that's where Miss Elton showed a long head," said Dick with
evident glee.

"But really now, joking apart," Davison went on, having made his
opening, "don't you think it's unsettling to a girl to do too much
studying?"

"I hope you are not deeply agitated over the eradication of
womanliness," Madeline remonstrated. "Really, Mr. Davison, it isn't an
easy thing to stop being a woman--when you happen to be born one."

"But there are plenty of unwomanly women," he objected.

"That's true," she answered, "but I believe womanliness is killed--when
it is killed--not through the brain, but through the heart. It's not
knowledge, but hard-heartedness that makes the unwomanly woman."

She glanced up and met Norris' eyes. It was not easy for him to join in
the chatter of the others, but he was thinking how she illuminated her
own words. Manifestly she was not lacking in mind, and quite as
evidently her brain was only the antechamber of her nature. She gave him
the impression of "the heart at leisure from itself". There was the
unc