f the club's president was married to a
professor in the State University of Michigan, and on one of her visits
home she suggested that her mother's club invite to address it the
Alliance Francaise lecturer of that year. He had to come out to Ann
Arbor, anyhow--Ann Arbor was not very far from Endbury--not far, that
is, as compared with the journey the lecturer would have made from
Columbia and Harvard to "Michigan State." One of the club husbands was a
railroad man and, maybe, could give them transportation. Frenchmen were
always anxious to make all the money they could--she was sure that M.
Buisine could be induced to come for a not extravagant honorarium. Why
should not Endbury go in for cosmopolitanism? That certainly would be
something new in Ohio.

And so it was arranged for an afternoon for the first week in December,
a very grand "house-darkened-and-candle-lighted performance," as
Madeleine Lowder labeled this last degree of Endbury ceremonious
elaboration. It was held at the house of Paul's aunt, so that,
naturally, Lydia could by no means absent herself. Madeleine came for
her, and together they took Ariadne to Marietta's house and left her
there for safe-keeping. Lydia was intensely conscious, under her
sister's forbearing silence, that Marietta had never been asked to join
the Woman's Literary Club. Even the jaunty Madeleine was aware of a
tension in the brief conversation over the child's head, and remarked as
she and Lydia walked away from the house: "Well, really now, _was_ that
the most tactful thing in the world?"

"What else could I do?" asked Lydia, at her wit's end. "I don't dare
leave Ariadne with those awful things from the employment agencies, and
'Stashie's not coming back till next week."

"Oh, _she's_ coming again, is she?" commented her companion. "Well,
that'll mean lots of fun watching Paul squirm. But don't mind him,
Lydia." Madeleine was one of the women who prided herself on her loyal
sense of solidarity among her sex. "If he says a word, you poke him one
in the eye. Keep her till after your confinement, anyhow. A woman ought
to be allowed to run her house without any man butting in. We let them
alone; they ought to let us."

There never was a person in the world, Lydia thought, in whom marriage
had made less difference than in Paul's sister. She was exactly the same
as in her girlhood. Lydia wondered at her with an ever-growing
amazement. The enormous significance of the marriage serv