“He sits around the club all day and cools himself in case he should decide to keep an evening engagement and need to look fresh. I see him off and on. Doesn’t look happy, for a fact.” “Anyway it’s none of our business, is it?” Jerrold laughed. “Not a whit and therefore interesting. I hate talking about what is my business.” “That’s a common failing,” said Helen a little bitterly. “I never realized how epidemic until lately, since Gage has decided to go in for himself. People ask me about everything except my bank balance.” “The penalty of being in the limelight, Helen.” She shrugged lightly, a tinge of weariness in her manner. “Don’t you like the limelight then?” he urged teasingly. Impatiently she turned on him. “Oh, more or less, I suppose. But I shan’t like it six months from now. I’ll be tired to death of it if it still keeps coming. You get fed up on it pretty quickly.” “So skeptical--” “You needn’t mock at me, Jerrold. You ought to admire me because I’m honest enough not to say that I weep every time my picture is in the paper. I go further. I am quite miserable when I realize that my limelight is directed mostly not at the inner workings of my mind but at my dress and my name and the fact that I take a marcel well.” “So you know that too, do you?” “I know everything about it,” Helen boasted mockingly. “I even admit the necessity for keeping my clothes pretty well pressed and clean. I may scoff with the rest of you at Mrs. Brownley’s methods of organizing a Junior Republican Club but I know that she’s the finest realist of us all. She is willing to admit that women love white elephant badges, and appeals to them as the virtuous sex, and fashionable Junior Republican Clubs, which are Junior Leagues in action. I can see myself developing a philosophy just like Mrs. Brownley and learning to speak of democracy and the home with her impressiveness and Mrs. Thorstad’s italics and bending my energies to making the Republican party sought after by women because after all it includes all the best people.” “You’re a great woman. I think I’ll write a book about you.”