ung, and, somehow, gloriously carefree and lighthearted.
There was about him a naturalness, a simplicity, to which one responded
in kind.

Seated beside her he turned and regarded her with disconcerting
scrutiny.

"Like it?" demanded Fanny, pertly. And smoothed her veil, consciously.

"No."

"Well, for a man who looks negligee even in evening clothes aren't you
overcritical?"

"I'm not criticizing your clothes. Even I can see that that hat and suit
have the repressed note that means money. And you're the kind of woman
who looks her best in those plain dark things."

"Well, then?"

"You look like a buyer. In two more years your face will have that hard
finish that never comes off."

"I am a buyer."

"You're not. You're a creator. Remember, I'm not belittling your
job. It's a wonderful job--for Ella Monahan. I wish I had the gift of
eloquence. I wish I had the right to spank you. I wish I could prove to
you, somehow, that with your gift, and heritage, and racial right it's
as criminal for you to be earning your thousands at Haynes-Cooper's as
it would have been for a vestal virgin to desert her altar fire to stoke
a furnace. Your eyes are bright and hard, instead of tolerant. Your
mouth is losing its graciousness. Your whole face is beginning to be
stamped with a look that says shrewdness and experience, and success."

"I am successful. Why shouldn't I look it?"

"Because you're a failure. I'm sick, I tell you--sick with
disappointment in you. Jane Addams would have been a success in
business, too. She was born with a humanity sense, and a value sense,
and a something else that can't be acquired. Ida Tarbell could have
managed your whole Haynes-Cooper plant, if she'd had to. So could a
dozen other women I could name. You don't see any sign of what you call
success on Jane Addams's face, do you? You wouldn't say, on seeing her,
that here was a woman who looked as if she might afford hundred-dollar
tailor suits and a town car. No. All you see in her face is the
reflection of the souls of all the men and women she has worked to save.
She has covered her job--the job that the Lord intended her to cover.
And to me she is the most radiantly beautiful woman I have ever seen."

Fanny sat silent. She was twisting the fingers of one hand in the grip
of the other, as she had since childhood, when deeply disturbed. And
suddenly she began to cry--silently, harrowingly, as a man cries, her
shoulders shaking, her face bu