She got up. She jerked her shoulders, as if the gown that clung to them were an obtrusion. Perhaps the obtrusion was elsewhere in the room. “It must be late, Farge?” The boy gave a limp hand: Marcia nodded sharply. Tom felt that Farge had not wanted to shake hands, and that Marcia would not have minded. He noticed that this girl was built very like a boy: and that Farge with his pudgy rondured body and pink cheeks was rather like a girl. Alone with Mrs. Duffield he found that he had been attracted by her daughter. He was not sorry. This charm upon him made it easier to be charming. He told an anecdote of that day in court: he had been in court seventeen days before, but instinct made him say “to-day.” Talking, it came to him how far more naïve and fresh this oldening, troubled mother was than her young daughter. Tom did not understand this. He felt it would not have been safe to tell white lies to Marcia. He wondered why the strange weariness and slackness of the girl came to him as pleasure. “Why, Mrs. Duffield, is the younger generation prematurely old?” She laughed with her liquid laughter. She did not guess beneath his question. “Why? Do you mean yourself? You are not prematurely old. Oh, I am sure not. You are mature. You have been forced so early to play a man’s part in the world.” “That can’t be it. I see it most in young folk that do not work at all.” “Well, not working at all is the part of the very old.” “I am still not satisfied. I almost think that the shrewd parents of Competitive America have learned to palm off their own weariness on their children. Just like them it would be: a trick of the trade.” “It is nothing but sophistication, dear Mr. Rennard. We old folks have the naïveté of savages. Our children are civilized. That is all.” She examined him. “Does this weariness repel you?” Tom watched sharply without heightening the look of his eyes. She had no idea whence had come his thoughts. “No,” he ventured. “That is proof, I suppose, that I am touched myself? It attracts me rather. Of course, not weariness alone.” Mrs. Duffield was weary: endlessly weary. Often she flung herself to bed with a horror of the needs of her toilet. Often she awoke in the morning with the demands of getting up a mountain in her path. She took Tom’s words to herself. She would not have to grimace her weariness away. It would be pleasure to be with him. Soon they were friends. When he came in to her, she thrust out an arm in greeting, and did not budge from her lounge. “Make yourself nice and at home; or I’ll have to get up and do it for you. I’m so comfy!” Her weariness went before her admission of it with him. He stood over her; she was aware that his eyes could see within the negligent folds of her flimsy housegown. What did it matter? They were friends. Once she said: “Make believe this is an evening dress. Then the décolleté won’t shock you.” “Then also, it won’t interest me,” said Tom.