memories. To generalize about women is to broaden our hope that one woman may serve for the rest. Philosophers disappointed in love often do this, though the man on the street is a fairly adept mimic. Ethel Curn’s bosom lightly scolded her pink waist and her poignantly devilish smile almost persuaded her that it was real. All the tragedy on her face spent itself in a distressed question. In unison with this proceeding a perturbed monologue within her addressed her vanity which was silkily perched upon an emotional balcony. “Hearn treated me white--blue garters with a real diamond in the center--he never smiled when he kissed me--God, why couldn’t I keep him?--He stayed with me a year and there’s not a woman in the troupe who’s had him more than a month--he’s a lying rat, but he never smiled when he kissed me--I wonder whether he’d smile if I slit his throat?--what did I ever see in that fat face--he’ll be a joke in a few years--they all throw you down unless you get in ahead of them--If I broke a bottle against his mug I’d only make him happy--it had blue silk tassles and he paid three hundred for it--I drank too much--blue silk tassles--He’s better than most of them--I knew what he wanted and I’m bawling him out because he got it--He treated me white--blue silk garters with real diamonds that would make the Queen of England wink--” The devilishly poignant smile and the monologue met each other within her, while fleeing back to their graves, and their unpremeditated clash illuminated the renunciation upon her face. She looked into her upturned, yellow turban as though it held elusive dregs. Brooding experimented with her head and suddenly threw it to the ground, dissatisfied. She lay there like the impoverished effigy of a far off love--her black skirt revealed her slim legs, with gloomy discourtesy, and her fluffy pink waist gave its babyish sympathy to the sharpness of her back. Her slender but muscular arms, stretching over the grass, were senseless branches touching the shoulders of the armless effigy. The wind trifled with her loose brown hair and incited it to ironically flitting imitations of life. Dead thoughts and emotions united upon her hidden face and gripped it with decayed finesse. She rested, perilously unconcerned, upon the sloping edge of the cliff. Suddenly, in a sibilant prank, the earth fled beneath her body and she disappeared. * * * * * They knelt around her prostrate figure hugged by the pale blue indelicacy of tights and the scant impudence of her yellow bodice. High above her a little wooden board dangled helplessly from a long wire, while another wire hung loosely above it. She opened her eyes and stared, with a lustreless disbelief, at the people who were like a tension ready to snap. “Damn him, he did me dirty!” she cried to the amazed, painted faces above her. HISTORY