my inference from our talk this morning. You made me feel by your whole
manner that you found me graceless, tasteless, to blame in some
way--perhaps for speaking about it to Jack. Jack is very near me, mama."

"But not near me."

"Ah, you made me feel that, too; and that you reproached me with having, as
it were, forced an intimacy upon you."

Valerie was drawing her dark brows together, as though her clue had indeed
escaped her. Imogen's mind slipped from link to link of the trivial, yet
significant, matter with an ease and certainty of purpose that was like the
movement of her own sleek needle, drawing loop after loop of wool into a
pattern; but what Imogen's pattern was she could hardly tell. She abandoned
the wish to make clear her own interpretation, looking up presently with a
faint smile. "I'm sorry, dear. I meant nothing of all that, I assure you.
And as to 'Jack,' it was only that I did not care to seem to justify myself
before him--at your expense it might seem."

"Oh, mama dear!" Imogen laughed out. "You thought me so wrong, then, that
you were afraid of harming his devotion to me by letting him see how very
wrong it was! Jack's devotion is very clear-sighted. It's a devotion that,
if it saw wrongs in me, would only ask to show them to me, too, and to
stand shoulder to shoulder with me in fighting them."

"He must be a remarkable young man," said Valerie, quite without irony.

"He is like most _real_ people in this country, mama," said Imogen, on a
graver note. "We have, I think, evolved a new standard of devotion. We
don't want to have dexterous mamas throwing powder in the eyes of the men