ng picture theater. To her
they meant something a step above the corner saloon, and a degree below
the burlesque houses. They were constituted of bad air and unchaperoned
young women accompanied by youths who dangled cigarettes from a lower
lip, all obviously of the lower class, including the cigarette; and of
other women, sometimes drab, dragged of breast and carrying children
who should have been in bed hours before; or still others, wandering
in pairs, young, painted and predatory. She was not imaginative, or she
could not have lived so long in Anthony Cardew's house. She never saw,
in the long line waiting outside even the meanest of the little theaters
that had invaded the once sacred vicinity of the Cardew house, the cry
of every human heart for escape from the sordid, the lure of romance,
the call of adventure and the open road.

"I can't believe it," she added.

Lily made a little gesture of half-amused despair.

"Dearest," she said, "I did. And I liked it. Mother, things have changed
a lot in twenty years. Sometimes I think that here, in this house, you
don't realize that--" she struggled for a phrase--"that things have
changed," she ended, lamely. "The social order, and that sort of thing.
You know. Caste." She hesitated. She was young and inarticulate, and
when she saw Grace's face, somewhat frightened. But she was not old
Anthony's granddaughter for nothing. "This idea of being a Cardew," she
went on, "that's ridiculous, you know. I'm only half Cardew, anyhow. The
rest is you, dear, and it's got being a Cardew beaten by quite a lot."

Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she paused
now and turned. It was to Grace that she spoke, however.

"They come home like that, all of them," she said. "In France also. But
in time they see the wisdom of the old order, and return. It is one of
the fruits of war."

Grace hardly heard her.

"Lily," she asked, "you are not in love with this Cameron person, are
you?"

But Lily's easy laugh reassured her.

"No, indeed," she said. "I am not. I shall probably marry beneath me,
as you would call it, but not William Wallace Cameron. For one thing, he
wouldn't have grandfather in his family."

Some time later Mademoiselle tapped at Grace's door, and entered. Grace
was reclining on a chaise longue, towels tucked about her neck and over
her pillows, while Castle, her elderly English maid, was applying ice
in a soft cloth to her face. Grace sat up.