“Look here, Gita Carteret, I’m not going to pretend I don’t know a lot of what you’ve been through. All your grandmother’s friends, including my mother, have talked of nothing else since you got here. Uncle Bill spent half his time in Paris before the war, and we cork-screwed the whole rotten story out of him. Mrs. Gaunt, mother’s crony, ran across your mother once, some time after your father’s death. Met her in some provincial town or other and carried her off to lunch—she had met your mother when she was visiting here, just after she had married, and admired her immensely; said she was the loveliest thing she ever looked at, and far too good for Gerald Carteret, who seems to have been the last word. Well, she got a few things out of your mother, who was too glad to talk to a woman of her own sort once more to keep up her natural attempt at reserve. It wasn’t difficult to find out she was poor and living in horrid pensions on a pittance from some relative. But she made Mrs. Gaunt vow she’d never tell Mrs. Carteret, and she never did. You’ve had a rotten life and I don’t wonder you’re bitter. But—how old are you?” “Twenty-two.” Gita, angry at first, had softened at the tribute to her mother. “Well—that’s old in one sense, these days. Jane Bull had had three affairs, married and settled down to a baby before she was twenty-three. But on the other hand it’s only a bit over three and one-tenth of the allotted span—less if this rejuvenation thing pans out. Between our new way of looking at life, and science, we can be young about thirty years longer than any generation that’s preceded us. What’s more, your troubles of one sort, at least, are over. You’ll have an independent income when the old lady shuffles off. For all you know life may have done her worst by you at the start and have relented for keeps. Don’t go on making faces at her. That old saying about man’s being his own worst enemy isn’t such a cliché as most. First thing you know you’ll be down and out again. Come now. You’re young enough to put all you’ve been through out of your mind and begin over. And you’ve ripping looks, if you don’t mind just one personal remark!” “You are very kind,” said Gita, almost humbly. “But I don’t think it is possible to forget—the impressions of one’s plastic years are indelible. It is easier, I fancy, to forget at forty than at twenty.” “I believe the will can do anything—in spite of Coué. Fancy that’s what’s the matter with you! Too much imagination, plus habit.” “Perhaps. But I assure you I have no intention of brooding too much and making matters worse than they are. Now that I have the chance of ruling my own life—as far as anyone may—I intend to get _something_ out of it. But men will play no part in it. Although I’ll be glad to talk to any intelligent ones I may meet. I haven’t met many so far.”