“Anyway, see how nice it would be if that other part of you could be off comfortably somewhere while this part was here, holding an empty cup, and preserving the outward appearance of listening to a young woman prattle about the momentous concerns of life.... Oh, there’s Mrs. Crasker! Do you know her? No? You should. She would tell you the most interesting things. She organized the Zodiac Club last spring and we all were studying the signs for a month or two. It really was wonderful. She told me that as I was a Pisces girl I must marry in the sign of Virgo or Capricorn. It was immensely interesting to study all your friends that way, to see why they shouldn’t have married the one they did. But of course you never could make a club that would stay put on such a basis as that. There was no way of dodging the facts. One may forget one’s age, but one can not elude one’s birthday. And there is no way of shifting it. When the woman whom we elected Vice President turned out by her birthday to be under the sign of—Taurus, was it?—it upset her to find that she must be inordinately fond of dress, that she would do anything for clothes, and so on. Why, it was like turning the X-ray on us. And we found that we all were wearing the wrong colors. The deeper we got into the thing the more impossible it began to seem that we ever should club well together, however much the awful discoveries might be expected to affect the general question of friendship.” “I will forgive you everything,” I said, “if you will entertain and enlighten me with an answer to a momentous question, namely: How are clubs to be explained—by which, of course, I mean feminine clubs.” For answer to this she gave a little laugh which at first I was at a loss to explain. Then I saw she was looking across the room toward a tall, rather heavy woman encased in black jet. “There is a woman,” she finally said, “who might give you one answer to that question.” “Do you mean that now you are going to give me her answer?” “I could only guess at that. But I might tell you a story.” “About her?” “About her.” “That wouldn’t be gossip, would it?”