She was a tired-eyed, meagre woman of near forty. She was brilliant. Every one in the office referred to her for facts and figures instead of going to the encyclopædia. Some of the things she wrote appealed strongly to Yetta, others were utterly futile. Besides her signed articles, mostly interviews with prominent foreigners,--she was fluent in half a dozen modern languages,--she composed "The Meditations of a Marriageable Maid." She was rather proud of this cheap wit. She seemed to like Yetta, but always introduced her as "_The Star's_ new sob-squeezer." Apparently she saw nothing in the new recruit but a successful pathos writer--a rising star in the profitable business of starting tears. This attitude, which Yetta encountered on all sides, hurt her. She read some of "Lilian Leberwurtz'" writings. She had discovered that the real name of this woman with whom she was expected to compete was Mrs. Treadway. It was hopeless slush; it sickened her. She tried vainly to picture the type of woman who could write such drivel seriously. "Dine with me Sunday," Miss Ripley asked her one day. She always talked in the close-packed style of a foreign correspondent who telegraphs at a dollar a word. "My flat. People you ought to know." Yetta was essentially inclusive, she did not like to turn her back on any proffered friendship. So at one the next Sunday she rang the bell of the uptown flat where Maud lived alone. There was one woman and three men in the parlor. "Who are they," Yetta whispered as she was brushing her hair in Maud's bedroom. "Matthews writes 'best sellers'--doesn't expect his friends to read them. Conklin has money--afford to write high-brow books that don't sell. Have to read between the lines. I'm too busy. Potter's a decadent poet. A bore, but all the rage. Mrs. Treadway--Lilian Leberwurtz--motherly old soul. Never know to look at her that she's the best-paid woman in the game--come on." Of course Yetta was most interested in Mrs. Treadway. She would hardly have called her motherly, although she sometimes referred to her son in Harvard and frequently used the phrase--"when you get to be my age." She was a large-bosomed, gaudy person with an almost expressionless face. Her gown looked cheap in spite of its evident expensiveness, and her jewellery was massive. But it was not her appearance nor her ponderous condescension which troubled Yetta. Mrs. Treadway in her first half-dozen words showed herself to be utterly sophisticated. She did not try to hide the insincerity of her work--she seemed to glory in it. Her first concern was to make it apparent that she was not such a fool as one would judge from her sentimental advice.