Her body was not angular. She sat very straight in her chair. “Then, the curtain falls.” She was tall, and sitting she topped David. “The way it was acted had a good deal to do....” She came forward a little. Her hands were half shut and flanked her head. Her arms were two columns propping some splendid official building. “Of course,” she was saying, “that sort of thing seems to be common in France. They’re a decadent race, you know. Clever, though!” Yes: her body was indeed not angular like her face. Her arms were ample. David could see the suggestion of flesh bursting the plain white sleeves. Her bosom was voluptuously full. Were these not feminine curves, these suave rounded masses? He felt the solidity of Miss Lord more somehow than her sex. Sex is an aura, not a form. Women understand this best. But a certain lack puzzled David. It was strange for him to sit so close to this lovely woman and not feel her lovely: to see her flawless and be unwarmed. “‘Oh,’ the Irishman pointed, ‘she’s an Irish bull.’” He should have laughed at this joke. He was full of the pain of Lois. Suddenly, he was thinking of Lois. “And what do you say,” it was the first question she had asked him in many minutes, “to Tammany’s victory! After three years of splendid reconstruction?” It was part of Miss Lord’s program to discuss politics. Miss Lord was no “crank on women’s rights,” as she put it. That was too serious a view of the thing. Above all, or under all, she wanted you to know that she was a woman: she wanted you to treat her as a woman. But a strong, wise woman. One who could, unblushing, talk of adultery in a French play or of the degradation of a Tammany campaign. “Why,” David answered, “I don’t know. I can’t understand. If all these things were true about Tammany Hall.... There must be something else behind it all: some _reason_ why Van Wyck was elected.” Miss Lord smiled. This was his opinion: a fledging’s she could take with indulgence. She wanted no more of it. Now she could deliver her own. She started. David was thinking of Lois. Little lovely Lois. Why must his mind fill so compellingly with Lois, when he lunched with Miss Lord? “The thing is, you see, the people do not think. Catchwords and Sunday picnics win them over. Really, popular government----” This woman. That girl. Could two creatures be more different? Why then the idea of a comparison. Did they have something, did they lack something in common? “... so far at least a failure.” Their ideas _were_ one. Here was Miss Lord trying to conceal the impression that she earned her living: trying with might and main to be like Lois. An older, more settled, equally virginal Lois?