"But _why_? Wasn't that awfully funny--" "Oh, I believe it's a custom, courtesy stunt you know, to show a poor guest some of the presents," he explained, manufacturing under pressure. "I wish she'd show _me_ her rings. Did you ever see so many? It was the only thing about her you'd call really Eastern--all those glittering diamonds on her fingers. And did you notice her hands?" Jinny went on enthusiastically. "Jack, I never knew there was anything so lovely as that girl in the world. She's simply _exquisite_.... I suppose it's her whole life," Miss Jeffries reflected, "keeping herself beautiful." Her eyes rested curiously on the feminine groups before them. "They haven't anything else to do or think about, have they?" "I understand some of them are remarkably educated young women." "What's the use of it?" said the practical daughter of an American college. "They can't ever meet any men, but just a husband--" "They can read for themselves, can't they? And talk to each other. And--well, what do you girls do with your education anyway? You don't lug anything very heavy about the golf course and the ball room." "Who wants us to? But we do bring something to committees and clubs and--and welfare work," Miss Jeffries maintained stoutly. "And we are always into arguments at dinners. While these girls, they can't dine out, they haven't anybody but themselves to argue with, and it doesn't matter a straw politically what they think--they can't even change the customs that their great, great, great grandfathers imposed. "If I were one of these girls," she declared positively, "I wouldn't bother about Kant and chemistry and history--I'd stuff myself full of sweetmeats and loll around on a divan and not care what happened outside. Or else I'd be miserable." "Perhaps they are miserable." "They ought to fight. Think, _think_," said Jinny dramatically, "of marrying some man you've never seen--the way that lovely girl is doing. Suppose she doesn't like him? Suppose he's dull and cranky and mean and greedy? Suppose he bores her? Suppose she actually hates him? Why, Jack, it's horrible! And yet she submits--she _submits_ to it--" "Suppose she has to submit, that she hasn't a soul on earth to help her? How would you fight, I wonder--" "Well, you don't need to shout about it! That woman's looking now--that one with the green turban and the stuffed-date eyes." Nervously Jinny glanced around. "It's a fearful lark," she murmured, "but I don't believe I'd ever have had the nerve if I'd realized.... What do you suppose they would _do_, Jack, if they found you out?... Those big blacks look so--so uncivilized." Her eyes rested upon the huge eunuch at the far entrance of the salon, a huge hideous fellow, with red fez, baggy blouse and trousers, and a knife handle sticking piratically from a sash.