This transfiguration of her father into a man of power was a sharp new knowledge. But in the more persuasive color of her home, its lines grew faint. It soon withdrew into the limbo of things remote, scarce real, hence scarce remembered. It had little application to her world uptown. In consequence, it had no effect. Lois left school in time for lunch. It was to be her last year at school. The lunches would go on. Seated at the wide round table with Muriel and her mother, she instinctively inquired into her own future freedom: and in this mood studied them. She studied their dress; she studied their activities. She absorbed their judgments and their pleasures. She was sixteen. A spirit of gayety and candor danced in her heart. But she had no knowledge to build a mansion for it: to train and cherish it: to give it weapons wherewith to confront the world. It was dancing, this unblemished spirit, dancing itself to death. For it was daughter of the sun, and it breathed no fresh air: it had been born careless and frail and all about it walls of convention: it was starved and forced to feed upon itself. “I promised to go and have tea with poor Mrs. Dent.” “Since when,” asked Muriel, “is Mrs. Dent ‘poor’?” “Don’t you remember she has just lost her husband?” “Oh, yes.” Muriel remembers. Her mother goes on. “Do you think, dear, you can drop me there on your way to the Selby’s?” “I don’t really see how I’ll have time, Mamma. I must take a rest after lunch. I promised to call for Aline King.” “Can’t Aline get there without you?” “I promised her, Mamma.” Mrs. Deane will take the street-car. She does not like to squander money on cabs. “You haven’t forgotten that you are going shopping with me, to-morrow morning. You promised me.” “I saw just the loveliest hat, just to-day, Mamma, at Bertrande’s. I am having it sent home to you. I’m sure it will suit you. Then, we needn’t go shopping. I must write to Clarice sometime. I thought I’d sleep late to-morrow and write before lunch. She is getting a divorce, you know.” Lois knew already the inwardness of marriage. There was much talk of this at the luncheon table. She had the right contempt for the girls who married unmoneyed men for love: for the men who risked their future--their finances--in alliance with unmoneyed girls: and for the novels she read where love was extolled and the sentimental match defended. These books were--well--for reading. Novels and stories were indulgences like red and emerald peppermints after dessert. They lied.