wns, all spoke of the young
people just starting out for themselves, there lived a family trying in
vain to find happiness. Both were young, she only twenty, he twenty-two.
She worshiped the idols. He worshiped her. She had social ambitions. She
needed money to carry them out. He got it as fast as he could and he was
doing pretty well. But it was not enough. That night they had said
bitter words to each other, then had repented and he had begged her to
be careful, to try for a while to do without unnecessary things for his
sake and said that she was more beautiful than any of the more richly
dressed women he knew and that she ought to be content. She promised to
try. But it was of no use. She heard the call of the idols. She could
not resist and bowed down and worshiped them. Before the year had passed
she had plunged into hopeless debt and in her mad devotion sacrificed
her husband with all his hopes and honest ambitions upon the altar. The
music, the lights, the dresses, the compliments, the promise of opening
doors into the society in which she wanted to shine, for a time drowned
the sight of his suffering and pain. Then suddenly he yielded to
temptation, was discovered taking money that was not his and the gods of
fashion and pleasure forgot them both; the doors of society closed and
she was left with nothing but her bitter thoughts. It was a costly
sacrifice but a common one which the Idols accept again and again.

Hardly two blocks below was another home with its lawn, its flowers, its
neat window boxes and its young trees. There in his nursery was a little
two-year-old. He stretched out his hand to his mother and cried when she
passed through the hall and down stairs. He had not been well for some
days and missed his old nurse who had been dismissed for a slight
offense the week before. He did not like the new nurse. His mother did
not know much about her. She seemed kind and she was very courteous in
her manner. The mother was going in her friend's machine, out to the
club-house for bridge. She was a little late and could not stop though
the child had looked very pitiful and rather pale. He still cried
despite the nurse's warnings, coaxings and threats. At last she grew
impatient, seized him and shook him until there was no breath left to
scream, laid him on his little bed and left the room. After a while
soft, heart-broken baby sobs came from the tired child and he lay still
as she had bidden him.

At the club