e I'm conscious of my shortcomings and am trying to correct
them; whereas you are satisfied, and fail to see the difference between
yourself and the well-bred women whom you envy and sneer at. You're
pretty and smart and superficial and--er--common, and you don't know it.
I'm rather dreadful, but I'm learning. I don't believe you will ever
learn. There! Now I'm going."

"Go!" cried Selma with a wave of her arm. "Yes, I am one of those women.
I am proud to be, and you have insulted by your aspersions, not only me,
but the spirit of independent and aspiring American womanhood. You don't
understand us; you have nothing in common with us. You think to keep us
down by your barriers of caste borrowed from effete European courts, but
we--I--the American people defy you. The time will come when we shall
rise in our might and teach you your place. Go! Envy you? I would not
become one of your frivolous and purposeless set if you were all on your
bended knees before me."

"Oh, yes you would," exclaimed Flossy, glancing back over her shoulder.
"And it's because you've not been given the chance that we have
quarrelled now."

CHAPTER X.

The morning after her drastic interview with Mrs. Williams, Selma
studied herself searchingly in her mirror. Of all Flossy's candid
strictures the intimation that she was not and never would be completely
a lady was the only one which rankled. The effrontery of it made her
blood boil; and yet she consulted her glass in the seclusion of her
chamber in order to reassure herself as to the spiteful falsity of the
criticism. Wild horses would not have induced her to admit even to
herself that there was the slightest ground for it; still it rankled,
thereby suggesting a sub-consciousness of suspicion on the look out for
just such a calumny.

She gave Littleton her own version of the quarrel. Her explanation was
that she had charged Flossy with a lack of friendship in failing to
invite her to her ball, and convicted her of detestable snobbery; that
she had denounced this conduct in vigorous language, that they had
parted in anger, and that all intercourse between them was at an end.

"We understand each other now," she added. "I have felt for some time
that we were no longer sympathetic; and that something of this kind was
inevitable. I am glad that we had the chance to speak plainly, for I was
able to show her that I had been waiting for an excuse to cut loose from
her and her frivolous surrou