oks, in dress and in wit, was more
comfortable to the standard of the best young men of Remsen City--a
standard which Miss Hastings, cultivated by foreign travel and social
adventure, regarded as distinctly poor, not to say low. Miss
Hereford's audacities were especially offensive to Jane. Jane was
audacious herself, but she flattered herself that she had a delicate
sense of that baffling distinction between the audacity that is the
hall mark of the lady and the audacity that proclaims the not-lady.
For example, in such apparently trifling matters as the way of smoking
a cigarette, the way of crossing the legs or putting the elbows on the
table or using slang, Jane found a difference, abysmal though narrow,
between herself and Yvonne Hereford. "But then, her very name gives her
away," reflected Jane. "There'd surely be a frightfully cheap streak in
a mother who in this country would name her daughter Yvonne--or in a
girl who would name herself that."

However, Jane Hastings was not deeply annoyed either by the
shortcomings of Remsen City young men or by the rivalry of Miss
Hereford. Her dissatisfaction was personal--the feeling of futility,
of cheapness, in having dressed herself in her best and spent a whole
evening at such unworthy business. "Whatever I am or am not fit for,"
said she to herself, "I'm not for society--any kind of society. At
least I'm too much grown-up mentally for that." Her disdainful
thoughts about others were, on this occasion as almost always, merely a
mode of expressing her self-scorn.

As she was undressing she found in her party bag the dodger Hull had
got for her from Victor Dorn. She, sitting at her dressing table,
started to read it at once. But her attention soon wandered. "I'm not
in the mood," she said. "To-morrow." And she tossed it into the top
drawer. The fact was, the subject of politics interested her only when
some man in whom she was interested was talking it to her. In a
general way she understood things political, but like almost all women
and all but a few men she could fasten her attention only on things
directly and clearly and nearly related to her own interests. Politics
seemed to her to be not at all related to her--or, indeed, to anybody
but the men running for office. This dodger was politics, pure and
simple. A plea to workingmen to awaken to the fact that their STRIKES
were stupid and wasteful, that the way to get better pay and decent
hours of labor wa