.. Unable to confess the need that drove her, she
arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's arms. Janet was
immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the masculine
trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one of
those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues
come as naturally as sun or air. Passion, when sanctified by matrimony,
was her ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of
it, having read about it in volumes her friend would not touch,
and never having experienced deeply its discomforts. Sanctified or
unsanctified, Janet regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently
broached the subject she recoiled. Once Eda exclaimed:--"When you do
fall in love, Janet, you must tell me all about it, every word!"

Janet blushed hotly, and was silent. In Eda's mind such an affair was a
kind of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a
volcanic eruption to turn the world red. Such was the difference between
them.

Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or
sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra. Stereotyped on
Eda's face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was
an expression of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that
vertical line in her cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of
white teeth and red gums. It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom
it appeared as the logical reflection of what was passing on the screen;
she averted her glance from both, staring into her lap, filled with
shame that the relation between the sexes should be thus exposed
to public gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded.... There were,
however, marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and
ships,--once a fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic
tongues of orange flame leaping from tree to tree. The movies brought
the world to Hampton, the great world into which she longed to fare,
brought the world to her! Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets
and muezzins from the Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow
resembling gilded beets turned upside down; grey houses of parliament by
the Thames, the Tower of London, the Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal.
Strange lands indeed, and stranger peoples! booted Russians in blouses,
naked Equatorial savages tattooed and amazingly adorned, soldiers and
sailors, presidents,