.' She sighed. 'I hope
some day you will think I'm clever enough for you to talk to me about
things.'

"She was playing up to him, you see, I think that Jerry is the most
extraordinary male animal that has ambled into her vision this winter.

"'I'd be glad to. Of course you're different from anything I ever saw
before,' said Jerry. 'I've always thought of nature as the most
beautiful thing in the world. Now I seem to be just as sure that art
is.'

"That rather took her aback, but she didn't turn a hair.

"'You think all this--superfluous?'

"'Not superfluous, perhaps. Merely artificial.'

"'Am I artificial?'

"'Yes,' bluntly! 'I don't understand it at all. But it's singularly
effective. It's like night with only one star visible--'

"'The more visible,' I put in, 'for being Venus.'

"She looked at me slantways. 'I'm sorry you said that, Mr. Ballard.
Venus is not my goddess. Diana--'

"'The Huntress,' I broke in again.

"'Pallas Athene, the guardian and guide of heroes,' she countered
neatly.

"'I'm glad you don't like Venus, Miss Van Wyck,' put in Jerry quickly.
'She made a lot of trouble, just because she was pretty. Diana--she
_was_ the right sort, no sentimental rot for her.'

"'Of course. Sentiment _is_ rot and so sloppy.'

"Jerry laughed ingenuously. 'That's a good word,' he said. 'Imagine
Diana being sloppy.'

"'Women aren't nearly as sentimental as they used to be. As a woman's
weapon hysteria has gone to the dust heap. Women are learning
independence. You believe in women thinking for themselves, don't
you?'

"'Of course,' said Jerry. 'But they don't, do they?'

"'_I_ do. It's one of my gospels to be self-sufficient. Don't you
believe me?'

"'I'd like to, you're so lovely to look at. I'd like to think you were
perfect in everything.'

"He refreshed her. Her artificialities one by one were falling away
from her like discarded garments. And yet I was not sure that it
wasn't artifice that was discarding them. She was very clever. I might
have guessed it, had I noticed earlier the volumes by Freud and
Strindberg on the little ebony side table."

Ballard paused a moment to light a fresh cigarette.

"Bah!" I muttered contemptuously.

He looked over at me thoughtfully. "You may sneer, Pope, my boy," he
commented. "But this sort of thing has come to stay. The infants are
imbibing it with their bottles--self-expression, self-analysis and all
that."

"But this girl is dangerous," I remarke