sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City!
She had fed on it ruthlessly--enjoying the crowds around her, the manner
in which the most desirable men singled her out; enjoying the fierce
jealousy of other girls; enjoying the fabulous, not to say scandalous,
and, her mother was glad to say, entirely unfounded rumors about
her--for instance, that she had gone in the Yale swimming-pool one night
in a chiffon evening dress.

And from loving it with a vanity that was almost masculine--it had been
in the nature of a triumphant and dazzling career--she became suddenly
anaesthetic to it. She retired. She who had dominated countless parties,
who had blown fragrantly through many ballrooms to the tender tribute of
many eyes, seemed to care no longer. He who fell in love with her now
was dismissed utterly, almost angrily. She went listlessly with the most
indifferent men. She continually broke engagements, not as in the past
from a cool assurance that she was irreproachable, that the man she
insulted would return like a domestic animal--but indifferently, without
contempt or pride. She rarely stormed at men any more--she yawned at
them. She seemed--and it was so strange--she seemed to her mother to be
growing cold.

Richard Caramel listened. At first he had remained standing, but as his
aunt's discourse waxed in content--it stands here pruned by half, of all
side references to the youth of Gloria's soul and to Mrs. Gilbert's own
mental distresses--he drew a chair up and attended rigorously as she
floated, between tears and plaintive helplessness, down the long story
of Gloria's life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of
the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked
"Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding
his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a