Alice Mendon. "Fitzgerald's robe always
drags, and nothing ever happens."

Alice Mendon was a young woman, not a young girl (she had left young
girlhood behind several years since) and she was distinctly beautiful
after a fashion that is not easily affected by the passing years. She
had had rather an eventful life, but not an event, pleasant or
otherwise, had left its mark upon the smooth oval of her face. There
was not a side nor retrospective glance to disturb the serenity of
her large blue eyes. Although her eyes were blue, her hair was almost
chestnut black, except in certain lights, when it gave out gleams as
of dark gold. Her features were full, her figure large, but not too
large. She wore a dark red tailored gown; and sumptuous sable furs
shaded with dusky softness and shot, in the sun, with prismatic
gleams, set off her handsome, not exactly smiling, but serenely
beaming face. Two great black ostrich plumes and one red one curled
down toward the soft spikes of the fur. Between, the two great blue
eyes, the soft oval of the cheeks, and the pleasant red fullness of
the lips appeared.

Poor Daisy Shaw, who was poor in two senses, strength of nerve and
money, looked blue and cold in her little black suit, and her pale
blue liberty scarf was horribly inadequate and unbecoming. Daisy was
really painful to see as she gazed out apprehensively at the dragging
robe, and the glistening slant over which they were moving. Alice
regarded her not so much with pity as with a calm, sheltering sense
of superiority and strength. She pulled the inner robe of the coupe
up and tucked it firmly around Daisy's thin knees.

"You look half frozen," said Alice.

"I don't mind being frozen, but I do mind being scared," replied
Daisy sharply. She removed the robe with a twitch.

"If that old horse stumbles and goes down and kicks, I want to be
able to get out without being all tangled up in a robe and dragged,"
said she.

"While the horse is kicking and down I don't see how he can drag you
very far," said Alice with a slight laugh. Then the horse stumbled.
Daisy Shaw knocked quickly on the front window with her little,
nervous hand in its tight, white kid glove.

"Do please hold your reins tighter," she called. Again the misty blue
eyes rolled about, the head nodded, the rotary jaws were seen, the
robe dragged, the reins lay loosely.

"That wasn't a stumble worth mentioning," said Alice Mendon.

"I wish he would stop chewing an