She swung her mind to the Russian grammar, enough to impale it in the death agony; but when she had entered her home, and, after a visit to her leisurely cook, who was a unionized socialist, ascended to her bedroom and stood before her mirror, she decided that it was her singular interview with the wife of Gregory Compton that had thrown her mind off its delicate balance. She recalled that Mrs. Compton--certainly an interesting creature in spite of her appalling commonness--had told her flagrantly that she was young, pretty, and attractive to men, even as are young and pretty women without too much brains. The compliment--or was it the suggestion?--had thrilled her, and it thrilled her again. Men sometimes had tried to make love to her, but she had ascribed such charm as she appeared to possess to the automatically vibrating magnet of youth; and although she had never been above a passing flirtation, either in her mother’s salon or in Butte, she merely had been bored if the party of the other part had taken his courage in his hands on the morrow. Scruples did not trouble her. The American woman, she would have reasoned, is traditionally “cold.” American men, brought up on her code of ethics, are able to take care of themselves. Had she been superficial in her conclusions? Could she attract men more potently than by a merely girlish charm and a vivacious mind? Her memory ran rapidly over the functions of the winter, particularly the dinners and dances. She could not recall a passing conquest. She was angry to feel herself shiver, but she jerked off her hat, and the pins out of her fine abundant hair. She was twenty-six. Had she gone off? Faded? She never had been called a beauty, never had had the vanity to think herself a beauty, but she remembered that sometimes in an animated company she had glanced into the passing mirror and thought herself quite pretty, with her pink cheeks and sparkling eyes. But normally she was too washed-out for beauty, however good her features might be, and of course she had no figure at all. She dressed well from force of habit, and she had the carriage at least to set off smartly cut garments, but as much might be said of a dressmaker’s “form.”