you who can say? And if you expect to get something for nothing
you're fooled before you start." She shook out the airy breadths of
a vivid echo of past daring. "From the way you act a person might
think you were pretty, but you are too thin and pulled out. I've
heard your looks called peculiar, and that was, in a manner of
speaking, polite. You're not even stylish any more--the line is full
again and not suitable for bony shoulders and no bust." She still
cherished a complacency in her amplitude.

Linda turned away unmoved. Of all the world, she thought, only Dodge
Pleydon had the power actually to hurt her. She knew that she would
see him soon again and that again he would ask her to marry him. She
considered, momentarily, the possibility of saying yes; and instantly
the dread born with him in the Lowrie garden swept over her. Linda
told herself that he was the only man for whom she could ever deeply
care; that--for every conceivable reason--such a marriage was perfect.
But the shrinking from its implications grew too painful for support.

Her mother's bitterness increased hourly; she no longer hid her
feelings from her husband and Judith; and dinner, accompanied by her
elaborate sarcasm, was a difficult period in which, plainly, Mr.
Moses Feldt suffered most and Linda was the least concerned. This
condition, she admitted silently, couldn't go on indefinitely; it
was too vulgar if for no other reason. And she determined to ask the
Lowries for another and more extended invitation.

Pleydon came, as she had expected, and they sat in the small
reception-room with the high ceiling and dark velvet hangings,
the piano at which, long ago it now seemed, Judith had played the
airs of Gluck for her. He said little, but remained for a long