e agreeable or the
reverse, but it is not a home.

In Irving Place there are homes. Among them was the house in which
Sylvia Waldron lived. It had been in her family for sixty years. In
London a tenure such as that is common. In New York it is phenomenal.

To Sylvia the phenomenon was a matter of course. What amazed her were
the migrations of others. Of Fanny, for instance. Each autumn Sylvia
would say to her, "Where are you to be?" And Fanny, who at the time
might be lodged in a hotel, or camping with a relative, or visiting at
Tuxedo, or stopping in Westchester, never could tell. But by December
the girl and her mother would find quarters somewhere and there remain
until that acrobat, summer, turned handsprings into town and
frightened them off.

Summer had not yet come. But May had and, with it, an eager glitter,
skies of silk, all the caresses and surrenders of spring.

The season was becoming to Fanny. She fitted in it. She was a young
Venus in Paris clothes--Aphrodite a maiden, touched up by Doucet. In
her manner was a charm quite incandescent. In her voice were
intonations that conveyed the sensation of a kiss. Her eyes were very
loquacious. She could, when she chose, flood them with languors. She
could, too, charge them with rebuke. You never knew, though, just what
she would do. But you always did know what Sylvia would not.

Sylvia suggested the immateriality that the painters of long ago gave
to certain figures which they wished to represent as floating from the
canvas into space. You felt that her mind was clean as wholesome
fruit, that her speech could no more weary than could a star, that her
heart, like her house, was a home. She detained, but Fanny allured.

In spite of which or perhaps precisely because of their sheer
dissimilarity the two girls were friends. But association weaves
mysterious ties. It unites people who otherwise would come to blows.
Fanny and Sylvia had been brought up together. The mesh woven in
younger days was about them still, and on this particular noon in May
they made a picture which, while contrasting, was charmful.

"You really like my hat?"

The hat was gray. The girl's dress was gray. The skirt was of the
variety known as trotabout. The whole thing was severely plain, yet
astonishingly smart. Sylvia was also in street dress. The latter was
black.

They were in the parlor. For in New York there are still parlors. And
why not? A parlor--or parloir--is a talking-place