significant aspects of feeling. Alone in a bed-chamber furnished in
silvery Hungarian ash, her bed a pale quilted luxury with Madeira
linen crusted in monograms, without head or foot boards, and a
dressing-table noticeably bare, she would deliberately and
delicately prepare for the night.

While Judith's morning bath steamed with the softness and odor of
lavender crystals, Linda slipped into water almost cold. This, with
her clear muslins and heavy black silk stockings, her narrow
unornamented slippers, represented the perfection of niceness.

There were others than Pansy, however, who commented on what they
called her superiority--the young men who appeared in the evening. A
number of them, cousins of the Feldt dinner parties or more casual,
tried to engage her sympathies in their persons and prospects. It
was a society of early maturity. But, without apparent effort, she
discouraged them, principally by her serene lack of interest. It was
a fundamental part of her understanding of things that younger men
were unprofitable; she liked far better the contemporaries of Moses
Feldt.

Reynold Chase had ceased his visits, but his place had been taken by
another and still another emotionally gifted man. The present one
was dark and imperturbable: they knew little of him beyond the facts
that he had been a long while in the Orient, that his manner and
French were unsurpassed, and that practically every considerable
creative talent in New York was entertained in his rooms.

Judith had been to one of his parties; and, the following morning in
bed, she told Pansy and Linda the most remarkable things.