"And the worst of it is," Alexandra pursued, with a sympathetic laugh for her mother's concern, "that he'll meet some Madonna-eyed little factory girl or laundry worker down there and feel that he owes it to her to--" "To break your heart, Sandy," the mother supplied, all tender solicitude. "It's not so much a question of my heart," Sandy answered composedly, "as it is a question of his entire life. It's so unnecessary and senseless!" "And you can sit there calmly discussing it!" Mrs. Salisbury said, thoroughly out of temper with the entire scheme of things mundane. "Upon my word, I never saw or heard anything like it!" she observed. "I wonder that you don't quietly tell Owen that you care for him--but it's too dreadful to joke about! I give you up!" And she rose from her chair, and went quickly out of the room, every line in her erect little figure expressing exasperation and inflexibility. Sandy, smiling sleepily, reopened an interrupted novel. But she stared over the open page into space for a few moments, and finally spoke: "Upon my word, I don't know that that's at all a bad idea!" an interrupted novel. But she stared over the open page into space for a few moments, and finally spoke: "Upon my word, I don't know that that's at all a bad idea!" CHAPTER V "Mrs. Salisbury," said Justine, when her mistress came into the kitchen one December morning, "I've had a note from Mrs. Sargent--" "From Mrs. Sargent?" Mrs. Salisbury repeated, astonished. And to herself she said: "She's trying to get Justine away from me!" "She writes as Chairman of the Department of Civics of the Forum Club," pursued Justine, referring to the letter she held in her hand, "to ask me if I will address the club some Thursday on the subject of the College of Domestic Science. I know that you expect to give a card party some Thursday, and I thought I would make sure just which one you meant." Mrs. Salisbury, taken entirely unaware, was actually speechless for a moment. The Forum was, of all her clubs, the one in which membership was most prized by the women of River Falls. It was not a large club, and she had longed for many years somehow to place her name among the eighty on its roll. The richest and most exclusive women of River Falls belonged to the Forum Club; its few rooms, situated in the business part of town, and handsomely but plainly furnished, were full of subtle reminders that here was no mere social center; here responsible members of the recently enfranchised sex met to discuss civic betterment, schools and municipal budgets, commercialized vice and child labor, library appropriations, liquor laws and sewer systems. Local politicians were beginning to respect the Forum, local newspapers reported its conventions, printed its communications.