"Setting aside the matter of the ethics of her egotism, our lady in question is animated by a conscientious desire to be a refining and admirable influence. It is her ambition to lead, but to lead nobly and unimpeachably. Her entertainments and her posture in and toward society have been pursued on this principle, and she has believed the effect produced by her to be irreproachable intellectual elegance, redeemed from formalism or dullness by scintillating vivacity. The suggestion, therefore, that she is behind the times gives her a genuine shock. She has hitherto prided herself on her mental acumen and on her knowingness. She has considered that she knew life to the dregs, so to speak, for she had passed through a course of French, and translated Russian novels, and acquired thereby a knowledge of things evil, which she kept stored in her inner consciousness as a source of pride and an antidote against undue primness in matters sexual and social. She begins to ask herself if it can possibly be true that she is an old fogy, and lacks breadth of view, and that society in its demands for liberty of conduct and agreeable entertainment is prepared to discard, as outworn and futile, conventions and limitations which she has been disposed to consider essential to civilized and decent deportment. As the result of this reasoning she resolves to cap her rival's next venture with something of her own. So it happens that not long after Mrs. Webb Johnston has summoned a few select spirits to sup and witness Miss Almira Wing, a visiting coryphée, do a skirt dance, Mrs. Sherman issues notes of invitation to what is mysteriously specified as 'An Eclipse Smoke Talk.' This proves to be a small gathering of choice souls to observe a total eclipse of the moon due at two o'clock in the morning from her own roof, and to listen to remarks by a leading astronomer secured for the occasion. This entertainment is a success, and serves to give her new heart. It was bold, still decent. She has preserved her self-respect, yet shown herself alive to the necessity of being original. She is prompt to reinforce it by an evening with a Russian Nihilist, a young woman reputed to have been prominent in plots to assassinate the Czar, and who makes a specialty of narrating her experiences after a Welsh rabbit, cigarette in mouth. Naturally, these enterprises spur Mrs. Webb Johnston to fresh efforts of the imagination. Her guests are beguiled at her next evening by a paper on 'Life among the Mormons,' delivered by one of the early female disciples of that community. No men are invited on this occasion. A fortnight later a very small and secretly invited company are bidden to behold an exhibition of the vagaries of a hypnotic patient.