"A little truth certainly wouldn't hurt you, Lottie Payson. I suppose it wouldn't help any, either, to acknowledge that you're a kind of unpaid nurse-companion to two old women who are eating you alive!--when your friend Judge Barton herself says that you've got a knack with delinquent girls that would make you invaluable on her staff. And now that you're well past thirty I suppose your mother doesn't sometimes twit you with your maiden state, h'm? Don't tell _me_! As for Effie Case there----" "Oh, my goodness Beck, spare muh! I've been hiding behind my knitting needle hoping you wouldn't see me. I know what's the matter with you. You've been sneaking up to those psycho-analysis lectures that old Beardsley's giving at Harper Hall. Shame on you! Nice young gal like you." "Yes--and I know what's the matter with you, too, Effie. Why you're always lolling around at massage parlors and beauty specialists, sleeping away half the day in some stuffy old----" With lightning quickness Effie Case wadded her work into a ball, lifted her arm, and hurled the tight bundle full at Beck Schaefer's head. It struck her in the face, rebounded, unrolled softly at her feet. Effie laughed her little irritating hysterical laugh. Beck Schaefer kicked the little heap of wool with a disdainful suede slipper. "Well, I wouldn't have spilled all this if Cele had been willing to tell the truth. I said we were failures and we are because we've allowed some one or something to get the best of us--to pile up obstacles that we weren't big enough to tear down. We've all gone in for suffrage, and bleeding Belgium, and no petticoats, and uplift work, and we think we're modern. Well, we're not. We're a past generation. We're the unselfish softies. Watch the eighteen-year-olds. They've got the method. They're not afraid." Lottie Payson laughed. Her face was all alight. "You ought to hear my niece Charley talk to me. You'd think I was eighteen and she thirty-two." Beck Schaefer nodded vehemently. "I know those girls--the Charley kind. Scared to death of 'em. They're so sorry for me. And sort of contemptuous. Catch Charley marrying ten years too late, like Celia here, and missing all the thrill." "I haven't!" cried the harassed Celia, in desperation. "I haven't! Orville's the grandest----" "Of course he is. But you can't have any thrill about a man you've waited ten years for. Why won't you be honest!" And suddenly the plump little silk-clad hostess stood up, her face working, her eyes bright with tears that would not wink away. "All right, I'll tell you the truth." "No, Cele--no!" "Sit down, Celia. Beck's a little off to-day." "Don't pay any attention to her. Waspish old girl, that's what----" Beck regarded her victim between narrowed lids. "You're afraid." "I'm not. Why should I be. Orville's the kindest man in the world. I thought so before I married him, and now I know it." "Oh--kind!" scoffed Beck. "But what's that got to do with happiness? Happiness!"