ould not weaken her system by taking
less than was demanded by "nature's infallible guide, the healthy
appetite." She would not give up the venerable and aristocratic
tradition that a lady should ever be reposeful.

"Another year or so," warned Jane, "and you'll be as steatopygous as
the bride of a Hottentot chief."

"What does steat--that word mean?" said Martha suspiciously.

"Look in the dictionary," said Jane. "Its synonyms aren't used by
refined people."

"I knew it was something insulting," said Martha with an injured sniff.

The only concessions Martha would make to the latter-day craze of women
for youthfulness were buying a foolish chin-strap of a beauty quack and
consulting him as to whether, if her hair continued to gray, she would
better take to peroxide or to henna.

Jane had come down that day with a severe lecture on fat and wrinkles
laid out in her mind for energetic delivery to the fast-seeding Martha.
She put off the lecture and allowed the time to be used by Martha in
telling Jane what were her (Jane's) strongest and less strong--not
weaker but less strong, points of physical charm.

It was cool and beautiful in the shade of the big gardens behind the
old Galland house. Jane, listening to Martha's honest and just
compliments and to the faint murmurs of the city's dusty, sweaty toil,
had a delicious sense of the superiority of her lot--a feeling that
somehow there must be something in the theory of rightfully superior
and inferior classes--that in taking what she had not earned she was
not robbing those who had earned it, as her reason so often asserted,
but was being supported by the toil of others for high purposes of
aesthetic beauty. Anyhow, why heat one's self wrestling with these
problems?

When she was sure that Victor Dorn must have returned she called him on
the telephone. "Can't you come out to see me to-night?" said she.
"I've something important--something YOU'LL think important--to consult
you about." She felt a refusal forming at the other end of the wire
and hastened to add: "You must know I'd not ask this if I weren't
certain you would be glad you came."

"Why not drop in here when you're down town?" suggested Victor.

She wondered why she did not hang up the receiver and forget him.

But she did not. She murmured, "In due time I'll punish you for this,
sir," and said to him: "There are reasons why it's impossible for me
to go there just now. And you know I can't