mimic Josephine Burroughs, a lady, the woman to whom he was engaged? In
these proud and pretentious surroundings he felt contemptibly
guilty--and dazed wonder at his own inexplicable folly and weakness.

Mrs. Bellowes departed before Josephine came down. So there was no
relief for his embarrassment. He saw that she too felt constrained.
Instead of meeting him half way in embrace and kiss, as she usually did,
she threw him a kiss and pretended to be busy lighting a cigarette and
arranging the shades of the table lamp. "Well, I saw your 'poor little
creature,'" she began. She was splendidly direct in all her dealings,
after the manner of people who have never had to make their own way--to
cajole or conciliate or dread the consequences of frankness.

"I told you you'd not find her interesting."

"Oh, she was a nice little girl," replied Josephine with elaborate
graciousness--and Norman, the "take off" fresh in his mind, was acutely
critical of her manner, of her mannerisms. "Of course," she went on,
"one does not expect much of people of that class. But I thought her
unusually well-mannered--and quite clean."

"Tetlow makes 'em clean up," said Norman, a gleam of sarcasm in his
careless glance and tone. And into his nostrils stole an odor of
freshness and health and youth, the pure, sweet odor that is the base of
all the natural perfumes. It startled him, his vivid memory of a feature
of her which he had not been until now aware that he had ever noted.

"I offered her some work," continued Josephine, "but I guess you keep
her too busy down there for her to do anything else."