Ora was recalling this conversation as she sat in her bedroom on the following evening. Her elemental yet uncannily sophisticated friend had a way of crashing chords out of jealously hidden nerves, which no exercise of will could disconnect from the logical parts of the brain. If it were true that what her now rampant ego, too long starved, really demanded was man and romance, she wished she had let herself run to seed until it was too late to reclaim her lost beauty and adventure into temptation. But a glance into the mirror deprived her of any further desire to join the vast sisterhood of unattractive females. Moreover, she had faith in the dominance of her will and common sense, and if her beauty would help her to the mental contacts she craved with brilliant and interesting men, far be it from her to execrate it. She dismissed the mood of self-analysis impatiently and opened her wardrobe, although half inclined not to attend the Prom. She was one of the patronesses, but her presence was not essential. It was pre-eminently the night of nights for young folks--brownies and squabs--and the absence of a married woman of twenty-six would pass unrecorded. Not a man in Butte interested her personally, nor was she in a frame of mind to be interested by any of the too specialised products of the West. Nor was she inordinately fond of dancing; there really was no object in going to this party save to witness the début and possible triumph of her protégée. But she felt something more than indifference toward this party. It was as if a gong sounded a warning in the depths of her brain--in her subconsciousness, perhaps, where instinct, that child of ancestral experience, dwelt. But even while she hesitated she knew that she should go, and she took one of her new gowns from a long drawer, and then began to arrange her hair.