Helen looked across the room curiously. Gage and Walter were both talking to Margaret who was standing in a little glow of electric candle light. Helen remembered that in college Margaret had done her hair that same way, in a loose knot modeled after some sculptured Psyche. “Don’t you think she is lovely?” she asked more in comment than question. “Do you mean beautiful?” “Well--what do you think?” “I don’t quite think of her as a woman.” “Silly stuff--” “No, truly. Most women you sense. They either try to use their sex to allure or impress you or else they repress it for any one of a dozen reasons. She--somehow seems to lack it.” “It’s not so easy as that, Jerrold, you phrase-maker. I’ve known her a long while and I have no idea whether she’s in love, has been in love, yearns after or fights against it. You guess boldly, but probably not well.” “Maybe not. You must tell me if I am right and you find it out.” There was a sound of motors in the drive outside, then high pitched voices, and Mrs. Brownley went out into the hall. “Isn’t this early for the youngsters?” asked Gage. They all laughed but though the conversation went on as before, an anticipation rested on them all. Against the background of the chattering voices in the hall, they seemed a little subdued, waiting. Allison Brownley pushed her escort in. He seemed to be reluctant but she had her hands on his back and he came through the door, stumbling. “We can come to the high brow party, can’t we?” cried Allison. “Can’t we have some food? We’re perfectly starved and there wasn’t a table to be had at the Rose Garden.” “I knew you must have been driven out of everywhere to come home this early,” called Gage, “though of course young men in the banking business might benefit by somewhat earlier hours.” The young man laughed awkwardly. He was a rather pale, small young man, badly dwarfed by Gage’s unusual bulk and suggesting a consciousness of it when he tried to draw Allison to the other end of the room. But she preferred Gage for the moment. She was not a pretty girl though she made that negligible. What was important about her was her vigor and her insolent youngness. Her hair was cut just below her ears and curled under in an outstanding shock and her scarlet evening dress and touches of rouge made Margaret, as she stood beside her, seem paler, older, without vigor. But she stood there only a moment, poised. Then the others, six of them, had invaded the dining room. Giggling, spurting into noisy laughter at unrevealed jokes, eating greedily, separating from the older people as if nothing in common could be conceived among them, they went to the farther end of the room, Allison with some youthfully insolent remark hurled back at Gage.