People were jerking their way back through the entrances, and she joined the fray. Out in the Stadium classes in gay costumes were walking into the field; the rain was extending a few moments of leniency. A fine drizzle started up with the air of permanency as the Ivy orator finished his quips and Harvard-and-Its-Relations flocked from the Stadium to the Yard. Joy wondered as she looked at the faces of the girls passing by and then at their soiled-white-kid-feet, how many had found heart to enjoy the exercises in concern for their apparel which had to last through the dance that evening. Félicie had managed to keep fairly dry, with the aid of her coat and umbrella, and was in average spirits. They met Hal Jennings at his hall, where he was vibrating between ten Relations, and joined the family board outdoors around a long table sandwiched in with many others beneath an awning. The crowd pressing about them was overpoweringly correct, and no one seemed to lose their gaiety although the rain came through the awnings and the walking underfoot was almost marshy by this time. Joy ate strawberries, her teeth chattering with cold, and tried not to show that she was minding a steady trickle down her back from a hole in the awning. She met several nice looking boys who came up to greet Félicie, each of whom told Joy that “it would have been an awfully pretty spread out here if it hadn’t rained” and soon dashed back to their Relations. “I wish you were going to stay to the dancing, and meet them when they’re feeling right,” Félicie whispered. “Most of the Relations will have gone by then.” When Joy was able to beat a retreat politely, Félicie and Hal came to the gate with her, and stood waving after her as she drove away in a cab. Never had Félicie’s loveliness been so breath-taking. Little dark rings of hair clung around her face, the damp air curling them into tendrils no Permanent Wave could duplicate; her lips were parted in the smile with which she could dazzle without bringing a wrinkle or cross line into the pink and white perfection of her skin. It seemed almost incredible that such wonder of nature could have so squandered itself on one girl. . . . Wearied by the events of the day, Joy went early to bed after giving Madame Durant a sketch of the main events of the rain. Sleep came reluctantly; she was thinking over Packy’s words. “No matter what the women of to-day are making of themselves—they’re all we’ve got.” “Bye and bye the world’ll get straightened out—it takes time—and costs a lot on the way.” How Packy had changed from the casual, flippant, “jazz-hound” of only last fall. To think about things so——She had made an error common among girls—Because men of his type had never talked seriously to her, she had supposed that they never thought seriously.