"She's got a mission in life, just like you and me," Fuschia showed her beautiful even teeth in one of her widest, curliest smiles. "Yours, with the great motto inscribed upon your banner, 'Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits,' is to rescue your brother from the deadly thraldom of the home; mine is to reform the stage; Mrs. Hepworth's is to redeem women's clothes. She has all kinds of theories about color and design and she wanted to put them in practice. That nice Mrs. Wilstead says that she's an odd, capricious, undisciplined creature, but a genius in her line. Oh, I've learned a lot about her from what Mrs. Wilstead and all these newspapers have told me, and what Mr. Hepworth hasn't told me. Papa, dear, I never admired any one in my life as I do that man. I've tried every way but using a drag-net to get him to tell me the whole story, but he's stood every test. He'll talk freely on any other subject." "Didn't happen to give you any inside talk about those Arizona properties, did he?" "He did not. You see he married the poor but beautiful girl, and then she got playing too gaily with Eugene Gresham, the great artist. You've heard of him surely. It was the triangle, you see. Same old dramatic motive. Then suddenly, just as every one was standing on their tiptoes to enjoy the view, why the triangle flew to pieces. The Cresswell Hepworth part landed out here, the Eugene Gresham part went to Europe, the Mrs. Hepworth part went into business with a Miss Carmine, and opened a big establishment in New York, and every one came down on their heels with a thud, and are still staring at each other wondering what's doing." "If Cress really wants her," remarked Fleming, flicking the ashes from his cigar, "he surely wouldn't be such a fool as to leave the field. He'd stay and fight for her." "That's man-talk," said Fuschia lightly contemptuous. "A crazy idea you all have, that you can make women love you. Don't you know how the leading man always walks about the stage clenching and unclenching his hands, and muttering, 'By heaven, I'll make her love me; I'll win her against all the wir-r-rld.' Poor souls, they think they can dazzle us into loving them; and many feel that if they only talk enough about themselves, and their great achievements, what they've done and what they're going to do, that they can't fail to fascinate us; and it often suits us to let them think so. Awfully funny, isn't it?" "I never succeeded in fascinating 'em, no matter what line I took," said her father with feeling. "Women don't care much for you, do they? Well, cheer up, Daddy, dear. They've never loved me. Once in a while, they're very nice to me, and we purr and purr and rub noses, but all the time we are watching each other out of our green eyes, and then one day there's the swift stroke of the velvet paw and the deep mark of claws." "Mighty little purr and velvet for me," Fleming's petticoat reminiscences were invariably gloomy, "mostly claws."