led daintily in a series of circles by Fashion and Wealth, enlisted her
passive patronage. She even tried the slums, but the perfume was too
much for her.

All the small talk and epigrams of the various petty impinging circles
under the social dome passed into and out of her small ears--gossip,
epigrams, aphorisms, rumours, apropos surmises, asides, and off-stage
observations, subtle with double entendre, harmless and otherwise.

She met people of fashion, of wealth, and both; and now and then
encountered one or two of those men and women of real distinction whose
names and peregrinations are seldom chronicled in the papers.

She heard the great artists of the two operas sing in private; was
regaled with information concerning the remarkable decency or indecency
of their private careers. She saw fashionable plays which instructed the
public about squalor, murder, and men's mistresses, which dissected very
skilfully and artistically the ethics of moral degradation. And being as
healthy and curious as the average girl, she found in the theatres
material with which to inform herself about certain occult mysteries
concerning which, heretofore, she had been left mercifully in doubt.

In spite of Kathleen, it was inevitable that she should acquire from the
fashionable in literature, music, and the drama, that sorry and
unnecessary wisdom which ages souls.

And if what she saw or heard ever puzzled her, there was always
somebody, young or old, to enlighten her innocent perplexity; and with
each illumination she shrank a little less aloof from this shabby
wisdom gilded with "art," which she could not choose but accept as fact,