rn from abroad had brought as a gift for
Edith a mourning gown from Paris, a most alluring creation--so much so, in
fact, that Edith had felt it simply indecent, insulting, and had returned
it to her sister with a stilted note of thanks. But Roger did not know of
this. There were so many ways, he thought, in which Laura might have been
nice to Edith. She had a gorgeous limousine in which she might so easily
have come and taken her sister off on little trips uptown. But no, she kept
her car to herself. And from her small apartment, where a maid whom she had
brought from Rome dressed her several times each day, that limousine rushed
her noiselessly forth, gay and wild as ever, immaculate and elegant,
radiant and very rich. To what places did she go? What new friends was she
making? What was Laura up to?

He did not like her manner, one evening when she came to the house. As he
helped her off with her cloak, a sleek supple leopard skin which fitted her
figure like a glove, he asked,

"Where's Hal this evening?" And she answered lightly,

"Oh, don't ask _me_ what he does with himself."

"You mean, I suppose," said Edith, with quiet disapproval, "that he is
rushed to death this year with all this business from the war."

"Yes, it's business," Laura replied, as she deftly smoothed and patted her
soft, abundant, reddish hair. "And it's war, too," she added.

"What do you mean?" her father asked. He knew what she meant, war with her
husband. But before Laura could answer him, Edith cut in hastily, for two
of her children were present. At dinner she turned the talk to the war. But
even on this topic, Laura's remarks were disturbing. She did not consider
the war wholly bad--by no means, it had many good points. It was clearing
away a lot of old rubbish, customs, superstitions and institutions out of
date. "Musty old relics," she called them. She spoke as though repeating
what someone else had told her. Laura with her chicken's mind could never
have thought it all out by herself. When asked what she meant, she was
smilingly vague, with a glance at Edith's youngsters. But she threw out
hints about the church and even Christianity, as though it were falling to
pieces. She spoke of a second Renaissance, "a glorious pagan era" coming.
And then she exploded a little bomb by inquiring of Edith.

"What do you think the girls over there are going to do for husbands, with
half the marriageable men either killed or hopelessly damaged?