ds--though
I believe it doesn't refer to the color of their hair. The other kind
are the white folks, the unpredatory ones who have scruples, and get
pushed to the wall for their pains."

Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned to the young man beside her. "It makes one
wonder, doesn't it," she conjectured pleasantly, "to which type one
belongs oneself?"

In this welcome shifting from the abstract to the understandably
personal, old Reinhardt saw his opportunity. "Ach, womens, beautifool
and goot womens!" he cried in his thick, kindly voice. "Dey are abofe
being types. To every good man, dey can be only wie eine blume, so
hold and schoen--"

Professor Kennedy's acid voice broke in--"So you're still in the 1830
Romantische Schule period, are you, Reinhardt?" He went on to Mrs.
Marshall-Smith: "But there _is_ something in that sort of talk. Women,
especially those who consider themselves beautiful and good, escape
being _either_ kind of type, by the legerdemain with which they get
what they want, and yet don't soil their fingers with predatory acts."

Mrs. Marshall-Smith was, perhaps, a shade tardy in asking the question
which he had evidently cast his speech to extract from her, but after
an instant's pause she brought it out bravely. "How in the world do
you mean?" she asked, smiling, and received, with a quick flicker of
her eyelids, the old man's response of, "They buy a dolichocephalic
blond to do their dirty work for them and pay for him with their
persons."

"_Oh!_" cried Mrs. Marshall, checking herself in a sudden deprecatory
gesture of apology towards her sister-in-law. She looked at her
husband and gave him a silent, urgent message to break the awkward
pause, a message which he disregarded, continuing coolly to inspect
his fingernails with an abstracted air, contradicted by the half-smile
on his lips. Sylvia, listening to the talk, could make nothing out of
it, but miserably felt her little heart grow leaden as she looked from
one face to another. Judith and Lawrence, tired of waiting for the
music to begin, had dropped asleep among the pillows of the divan. Mr.
Bauermeister yawned, looked at the clock, and plucked at the strings
of his violin. He hated all talk as a waste of time. Old Reinhardt's
simple face looked as puzzled and uneasy as Sylvia's own. Young Mr.
Saunders seemed to have no idea that there was anything particularly
unsettling in the situation, but, disliking the caustic vehemence of
his old colleague'