lf, saving my life. She's not been the same girl since."

"'Girl'?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "she's exactly the same _woman_, only more
so because she's older. I hope she won't lose her figger; she's gettin'
thin. My dear grandmother--she was a Dennison; fat; I can hear her now
talkin' to her daughters: 'Girls! _Don't_ lose your figgers!' She had
red hair."

Eleanor had not lost her figure; it was still graciously erect, and with
lovely curves of bosom and shoulders; but, somehow, she seemed
older--older even than she was! Perhaps because of her efforts to be
girlish? It was as if she wore clothes she had outgrown--clothes that
were too tight and too short. She used Maurice's slang without its
virile appropriateness; when they accepted an invitation from one of
Maurice's new acquaintances, her anxiety to be of his generation was
pathetic--or ludicrous, as one happened to look at it. These friends of
Maurice's seemed to have innumerable interests in common with him that
she knew nothing about--and jokes! How tired she got of their jokes,
which were mostly preposterous badinage, expressed with entire solemnity
and ending in yells of laughter. Yet she tried to laugh, too; though she
rarely knew what it was all about. There is nothing which divides the
generations more sharply than their ideas of humor. But Eleanor tried,
very pitifully hard, to be silly with the kind of silliness which
Maurice seemed to enjoy; but, alas! she only achieved the silliness
which he--like every husband on earth!--hated: the silliness of small
jealousies. Once she told Maurice she didn't like those dinner parties
that his friends were always asking them to,--"I think it's nicer here,"
she said.

And he said, cheerfully: "Don't go! I don't mind going alone."

"I know you don't," she said, wistfully.... "Why can't he be satisfied
to stay at home with me?" she said once to her aunt; and Mrs. Newbolt
told her why:

"Because you don't interest him. Eleanor! if you want to keep that boy,
urge him to go out and have a good time, _without you_!" Then she added
some poignantly true remarks: "My dear father used to say, 'Just as many
men are faithless to their wives because their wives have plain minds,
as because other women have pretty faces.' Well, I'm afraid poor dear
mother's mind was plain; that's why I always made an effort to talk to
your uncle, and be entertainin'. And I'll tell you another thing--for
if I have a virtue it's candor--if you let him