And now that you've freed your mind I hope you'll keep it free for your own affairs." "Ouch!" cried Henrietta, making a wry face.

And she devoted the rest of the afternoon to what she realized, at the parting, was the vain task of mollifying Del.

She knew that thenceforth she and Adelaide would drift apart; and she was sorry, for she liked her--liked to talk with her, liked to go about with her.

Adelaide's beauty attracted the men, and a male audience was essential to Henrietta's happiness; she found the conversation of women--the women she felt socially at ease with--tedious, and their rather problematic power of appreciation limited to what came from men.

As she grew older, and less and less pleasing to the eye, the men showed more and more clearly how they had deceived themselves in thinking it was her brains that had made them like her.