table, hung critically upon the brilliant red and white reflection in
the glass. It was her comforting assurance that every woman looked her
best in bed; and as she lay now, following the lines of her charming
figure beneath the satin coverlet, she found herself wondering, not
without resentment, why the possession of a beauty so conspicuous should
afford her only a slight and temporary satisfaction. Last week a woman
whom she knew had had her nose broken in an automobile accident, and as
she remembered this it seemed to her that the mere fact of her
undisfigured features was sufficient to be the cause of joyful
gratitude. But this, she knew, was not so, for her face was perfectly
unharmed; and yet she felt that she could hardly have been more
miserable, even with a broken nose.

Here she paused for an instant in order to establish herself securely in
her argument, for, though she could by no stretch of the imagination
regard her mind as of a meditative cast, there are hours when even to
the most flippant experience wears the borrowed mantle of philosophy.
Abstract theories of conduct diverted her but little; what she wanted
was some practical explanation of the mental weariness she felt. What
she wanted, she repeated, as if to drive in the matter with a final
blow, was to be as happy in the actual condition as she had told herself
that she might be when as yet the actual was only the ideal. Why, for
instance, when she had been wretched with but one man on the box, should
the addition of a second livery fail to produce in her the contentment
of which she had often dreamed while she disconsolately regarded a
single pair of shoulders? That happiness did not masquerade in livery
she had learned since she had triumphantly married the richest man she
knew, and the admission of this brought her almost with a jump to the
bitter conclusion of her unanswerable logic--for the satisfaction which
was not to be found in a footman was absent as well from the imposing