while, she'll never know the difference. I swear to God she'll
never know the difference, mamma!"

"Poor gramaw!"

"Mamma, promise me--your little Selene. Promise me?"

"Selene, Selene, can we keep it from her?"

"I swear we can, mamma."

"Poor, poor gramaw!"

"Mamma? Mamma darling?"

"O God, show me the way!"

"Ain't it me that's got life before me? My whole life?"

"Yes--Selene."

"Then, mamma, please--you will--you will--darling?"

"Yes, Selene."

* * *

In a large, all-frescoed, seventy-five dollars an evening with lights
and cloak-room service ballroom of the Hotel Walsingham, a family
hostelry in that family circle of St. Louis known as its West End, the
city holds not a few of its charity-whists and benefit musicales; on a
dais which can be carried in for the purpose, morning readings of
"Little Moments from Little Plays," and with the introduction of a
throne-chair, the monthly lodge-meetings of the Lady Mahadharatas of
America. For weddings and receptions, a lane of red carpet leads up to
the slight dais; and, lined about the brocade and paneled walls,
gilt-and-brocade chairs, with the crest of Walsingham in padded
embroidery on the backs. Crystal chandeliers, icicles of dripping light,
glow down upon a scene of parquet floor, draped velours, and mirrors
wreathed in gilt.

At Miss Selene Coblenz's engagement reception, an event properly
festooned with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of
waiters tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and
a finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra,
faintly seen and still more faintly heard, played into the babel.

Light, glitteringly filtered through the glass prisms, flowed down upon
the dais; upon Miss Selene Coblenz, in a taffeta that wrapped her flat
waist and chest like a calyx and suddenly bloomed into the full inverted
petals of a skirt; upon Mr. Lester Goldmark, his long body barely
knitted yet to man's estate, and his complexion almost clear, standing
omnivorous, omnipotent, omnipresent, his hair so well brushed that it
lay like black japanning, a white carnation at his silk lapel, and his
smile slightly projected by a rush of very white teeth to the very
front. Next in line, Mrs. Coblenz, the red of a fervent moment high in
her face, beneath the maroon-net bodice the swell of her bosom fast, and
her white-gloved hands constantly at the opening and shutting of a
lace-and-spangled fan.