experiences, which they confessed to one another; and she had had hers, of
course, like her affair with Fosdick; but so innocent, so merely kittenish
that they had almost disappeared from memory. These girls at St. Mary's
read poetry, and had dreams of heroes, in the form of football players.
They all thought about marriage, coming as they did from well-to-do
parents, whose daughters might be expected to marry. Marriage, men,
position in the world,--all that was their proper inheritance.

After St. Mary's there had been two winters in St. Louis,--her first real
dinners and parties, her first real men. Then a brief season in Washington
as Senator Thomas's guest, where the horizon, especially the man part of
it, had considerably widened. She had made a fair success in Washington,
thanks to her fresh beauty and spirit, and also, she was frank to confess,
thanks to the Senator's interest and the reputation of her father's wealth.
Then had come a six months with her mother and Vickers in Europe, from
which she returned abruptly to get engaged, to begin life seriously.

These experimental years had seemed to her full of radiant avenues, any one
of which she was free to enter, and for a while she had gone joyously on,
discovering new avenues, pleasing herself with trying them all
imaginatively. At the head of all these avenues had stood a man, of course.
She could recall them all: the one in St. Louis who had followed her to
Washington, up the Nile, would not be turned away. Once he had touched her,
taken her hand, and she had felt cold,--she knew that his was not her way.
In Washington there had been a brilliant congressman whom the Senator
approved of,--an older man. She had given him some weeks of puzzled
deliberation, then rejected him, as she considered sagely, because he spoke
only to her mind. Perhaps the most dangerous had been the Austrian whom she
had met in Rome. She almost yielded there; but once when they were alone
together she had caught sight of depths in him, behind his black eyes and