no longer invited. Also one morning she
read in the Tribune that Mrs. Corscaden Batjer had sailed for Italy.
No word of this had been sent to Berenice. Yet Mrs. Batjer was
supposedly one of her best friends. A hint to some is of more avail
than an open statement to others. Berenice knew quite well in which
direction the tide was setting.

True, there were a number--the ultra-smart of the smart world--who
protested. Mrs. Patrick Gilbennin, for instance: "No! You don't tell
me? What a shame! Well, I like Bevy and shall always like her. She's
clever, and she can come here just as long as she chooses. It isn't
her fault. She's a lady at heart and always will be. Life is so
cruel." Mrs. Augustus Tabreez: "Is that really true? I can't believe
it. Just the same, she's too charming to be dropped. I for one
propose to ignore these rumors just as long as I dare. She can come
here if she can't go anywhere else." Mrs. Pennington Drury: "That of
Bevy Fleming! Who says so? I don't believe it. I like her anyhow. The
idea of the Haggertys cutting her--dull fools! Well, she can be my
guest, the dear thing, as long as she pleases. As though her mother's
career really affected her!"

Nevertheless, in the world of the dull rich--those who hold their own
by might of possession, conformity, owl-eyed sobriety, and
ignorance--Bevy Fleming had become persona non grata. How did she take
all this? With that air of superior consciousness which knows that no
shift of outer material ill-fortune can detract one jot from an inward
mental superiority. The truly individual know themselves from the
beginning and rarely, if ever, doubt. Life may play fast and loose
about them, running like a racing, destructive tide in and out, but
they themselves are like a rock, still, serene, unmoved. Bevy Fleming
felt herself to be so immensely superior to anything of which she was a
part that she could afford to hold her head high even now Just the
same, in order to remedy the situation she now looked about her with an
eye single to a possible satisfactory marriage. Braxmar had gone for
good. He was somewhere in the East--in China, she heard--his
infatuation for her apparently dead. Kilmer Duelma was gone
also--snapped up--an acquisition on the part of one of those families
who did not now receive her. However, in the drawing-rooms where she
still appeared--and what were they but marriage markets?--one or two
affairs did spring up--tentative appr