doors into the society in which she wanted to shine, for a time drowned
the sight of his suffering and pain. Then suddenly he yielded to
temptation, was discovered taking money that was not his and the gods of
fashion and pleasure forgot them both; the doors of society closed and
she was left with nothing but her bitter thoughts. It was a costly
sacrifice but a common one which the Idols accept again and again.

Hardly two blocks below was another home with its lawn, its flowers, its
neat window boxes and its young trees. There in his nursery was a little
two-year-old. He stretched out his hand to his mother and cried when she
passed through the hall and down stairs. He had not been well for some
days and missed his old nurse who had been dismissed for a slight
offense the week before. He did not like the new nurse. His mother did
not know much about her. She seemed kind and she was very courteous in
her manner. The mother was going in her friend's machine, out to the
club-house for bridge. She was a little late and could not stop though
the child had looked very pitiful and rather pale. He still cried
despite the nurse's warnings, coaxings and threats. At last she grew
impatient, seized him and shook him until there was no breath left to
scream, laid him on his little bed and left the room. After a while
soft, heart-broken baby sobs came from the tired child and he lay still
as she had bidden him.

At the club women dressed in all the extremes of fashion, laughed and
chatted or grew tense and strained as they exchanged their cards. Over
in one corner some of the younger women blew curls of smoke into the
air. The baby's mother sat there.

It seemed very lonely to the little boy lying in his nursery. The sobs
ceased, the baby grew interested in life once more, climbed over the