Almost every lady suggested that she might have decorated the staff of her journal an appreciable number of years, if that supposition had not been forbidden by the fact that the feminine element in journalism is of comparatively recent introduction.

Elfrida wondered what they occupied themselves with before.

It did not detract from her sense of the success of the evening--Golightly Ticke went about telling everybody that she was the new American writer on the _Age_--to feel herself altogether the youngest person present, and manifestly the most effectively dressed, in her cloudy black net and daffodils.

Her spirits rose with a keen instinct that assured her she would win, if it were only a matter of a race with _them_.

She had never had the feeling, in any security, before; it lifted her and carried her on in a wave of exhilaration.