"That was a real kiss, dear," he said slowly. "We mustn't get such things confused. I won't bother you with talking about it to-night, or until you are ready. Until then we'll pretend that it didn't happen, but if the thought of it should ever disturb you the least bit, dear, you are to remember that the time is coming when I shall have something to say about it; will you remember?" "Yes, Uncle David," Eleanor said uncertainly, "but I--I--" David took her unceremoniously by the shoulders. "Go now," he said, and she obeyed him without further question. CHAPTER XVIII BEULAH'S PROBLEM Peter was shaving for the evening. His sister was giving a dinner party for two of her husband's fellow bankers and their wives. After that they were going to see the latest Belasco production, and from there to some one of the new dancing "clubs,"--the smart cabarets that were forced to organize in the guise of private enterprises to evade the two o'clock closing law. Peter enjoyed dancing, but he did not as a usual thing enjoy bankers' wives. He was deliberating on the possibility of excusing himself gracefully after the theater, on the plea of having some work to do, and finally decided that his sister's feelings would be hurt if she realized he was trying to escape the climax of the hospitality she had provided so carefully. He gazed at himself intently over the drifts of lather and twisted his shaving mirror to the most propitious angle from time to time. In the room across the hall--Eleanor's room, he always called it to himself--his young niece was singing bits of the Mascagni intermezzo interspersed with bits of the latest musical comedy, in a rather uncertain contralto. "My last girl came from Vassar, and I don't know where to class her." Peter's mind took up the refrain automatically. "My last girl--" and began at the beginning of the chorus again. "My last girl came from Vassar," which brought him by natural stages to the consideration of the higher education and of Beulah, and a conversation concerning her that he had had with Jimmie and David the night before. "She's off her nut," Jimmie said succinctly. "It's not exactly that there's nobody home," he rapped his curly pate significantly, "but there's too much of a crowd there. She's not the same old girl at all. She used to be a good fellow, high-brow propaganda and all. Now she's got nothing else in her head. What's happened to her?" "It's what hasn't happened to her that's addled her," David explained. "It's these highly charged, hypersensitive young women that go to pieces under the modern pressure. They're the ones that need licking into shape by all the natural processes." "By which you mean a drunken husband and a howling family?" Jimmie suggested. "Yes, or its polite equivalent." "That is true, isn't it?" Peter said. "Feminism isn't the answer to Beulah's problem."