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IT DID not wait so long as it usually did: Anne came home early, too, at eleven; though the dancing would go on until one, and it was her habit to stay as long as the musicians did. Distant throbbings of dance music from across the links came in at the girl’s open window as she undressed in her pretty room; but she listened without pleasure, for perhaps she felt something unkind in these far-away sounds to-night—something elfish and faintly jeering.

Her mother, coming in, and smiling as she always did when she came for their after-the-party talks, saw that Anne looked serious: her eyes were grave and evasive.

“Did you get tired—or anything, Anne?”

“It wasn’t very exciting—just the same old crowd that you always see there, week after week. I thought I might as well get to bed a little early.”

“That’ll please your father,” Mrs. Cromwell assured her. “I noticed you danced several times with young Hobart Simms. You were dancing with him when I left, I think.”

“Yes?” Anne said, inquiringly, but she did not look toward her mother. She stood facing her dressing-table, apparently preoccupied with it. “I shouldn’t?”

“ ‘Shouldn’t?’ ” Mrs. Cromwell echoed, laughing indulgently. “He’s commonplace, perhaps, but he’s a nice boy, and everybody admires the plucky way he’s behaved about his father’s failure. I only thought——” she hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I only thought—well, he is a little shorter than you——”

“I see,” Anne said; and with that she turned eyes starry with emotion full upon her mother. The look was almost tragic, but her voice was gentle. “Did we seem—ridiculous?”

“No, indeed! Not at all.”

“I think we did,” Anne murmured and looked down at the dressing-table again. “Well—it doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t be so fanciful,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “You couldn’t look ridiculous under any circumstances, Anne.”

“I understand,” said Anne. “You don’t think I danced with Hobart Simms because I wanted to, do you, Mother?”

“No, it was because you’re kind,” Mrs. Cromwell returned, comfortingly; then continued, in a casual way, “It just happened you were with poor little Hobart during the short time I was looking on. I suppose you weren’t too partial to him, dear. You danced with all the rest of the customary besiegers, didn’t you?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Anne said, wearily. In profile to her mother, she stood looking down upon the dressing-table, her hands moving among little silver boxes and trumperies of ivory and jade and crystal; but those white and shapely hands, adored by the mother, were doing nothing purposeful and were only pretending to be employed—a signal to mothers that daughters wish to be alone but do not know how to put the wish into tactful words. Mrs. Cromwell understood; but she did not go.

“I’m glad you danced with all of ’em,” she said. “You did dance with them all, did you, Anne?”

“I guess so.”

“I’m glad,” the mother said again, and then, as in a musing afterthought, she added, “I only looked on for a little while. I suppose Harrison was there?”

The daughter’s hands instantly stopped moving among the pretty trifles on the dressing-table; she was still from head to foot; but she spoke in a careless enough tone. “Harrison Crisp? Yes. He was there.” And then, as if she must be scrupulously honest about this impression, she added, “At least, I think he was.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed, enlightened. “Anne, didn’t you dance with him at all?”

“With Harrison?” the girl asked, indifferently. “No; I don’t believe I did, now I come to think of it.”

“Didn’t he ask you at all?”

Anne turned upon her with one of those little gasps that express the exasperated weariness of a person who makes the same explanation for the hundreth time. “Mother! If he didn’t ask me, isn’t that the same as not asking me ‘at all’? What’s the difference between not dancing with a person and not dancing with him ‘at all’? What’s the use of making such a commotion about it? Dear me!”

The unreasonableness of this attack might have hurt a sensitive mother; but Mrs. Cromwell was hurt only for her daughter:—petulance was not “like” Anne, and it meant that she was suffering. Mrs. Cromwell was suffering, too, but she did not show it.

“What in the world was Harrison doing all evening?” she asked. “It seems strange he didn’t come near you.”

“There’s no city ordinance compelling every man in this suburb to ask me to dance. I don’t know what he was doing. Dancing with that girl from nowhere, probably.”

“With whom?”

“Nobody you know,” Anne returned, impatiently. “A girl that’s come here lately. He seemed to be unable to tear himself away from her long enough to even say ‘How-dy-do’ to anybody else. He’s making rather an exhibition of himself over her, they say.”

“I heard something of the kind,” her mother said, frowning. She seated herself in a cushioned chair near the dressing-table. “Is she a commonish girl named Sallie something?”

“Yes, she is,” Anne replied, and added bitterly: “Very!” Having reached this basis, they found that they could speak more frankly; and both of them felt a little relief. Anne sat down, facing her mother. “She’s a perfectly horrible girl, Mother—and that’s what he seems to like!”

“I happened to hear a little about her,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “I noticed some relatives of hers who were there—her mother was one—and they were distinctly what we call ‘common.’ I was so surprised to find such people put up as guests at the club that before I came home I asked some questions about them. The mother and daughter have come here to live, and they’re apparently quite well-to-do. Their name is Ealing, it seems.”

“Yes,” said Anne. “Sallie Ealing.”

“What surprised me most,” Mrs. Cromwell continued, “I learned that they’d not only been given guests’ cards for the club, but had actually been put up for membership.”

“Yes,” Anne said huskily. “It’s Harrison. He did it himself and he’s got about a dozen people to second them. Several of the girls thought it their duty to tell me about that to-night.”

“You poor, dear child!” the mother cried; but her compassion had an unfortunate effect, for the suave youthful contours of the lovely face before her were at once threatened by the malformations of anguish: Anne seemed about to cry vociferously, like a child. She got the better of this impulse, however; but she stared at her mother with a luminous reproach; and the light upon the dressing-table beside her shone all too brightly upon her lowered eyelids, where liquid glistenings began to be visible.

“Oh, Mamma!” she gasped. “What’s the matter with me?”

“The matter with you?” her mother cried. “You’re perfect, Anne! What do you mean?”

Anne choked, bit her lip, and again controlled herself, except for the tears that kept forming steadily and sliding down from her eyes as she spoke. “I mean, why do I mind it so much? Why do I care so about what’s happening to me now? I never minded anything in my life before, that I remember. I was sorry when Grandpa died, but I didn’t feel like this. Have I been too happy? Is it a punishment?”

Her mother seized her hands. “ ‘Punishment’? No! You poor lamb, you’re making much out of nothing. Nothing’s happened, Anne.”

“Oh, but it has!” Anne cried, and drew her hands away. “You don’t know, Mamma! It’s been coming on ever since that girl first came to one of the summer dances, a month ago! Mamma, to-night, if it hadn’t been for little Hobart Simms, there were times when I’d have been stranded! Absolutely! It’s such a horribly helpless feeling, Mamma. I never knew what it was before—but I know now!”

“But you weren’t ‘stranded,’ dear, you see.”

“I might have been if I hadn’t come away,” Anne said, and her tears were heavier. “Mamma, what can I do? It’s so unfair!”

“You mean this girl is unfair?”

“No; she only does what she thinks will give her a good time.” There was sturdiness in Anne’s character; she was able to be just even in this crisis of feeling. “You can’t blame her, and it wouldn’t do any good if you did. I mean it’s unfair of human nature, I guess. I honestly never knew that men were so stupid and so—so soft! I mean it’s unfair that a girl like this Sallie Ealing can turn their heads.”

“I just caught a glimpse of her,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “What is she like?”

“She’s awful. The only thing she hasn’t done is bob her wonderful hair, but she’s too clever about making the best of her looks to do that. She smokes and drinks and ‘talks sex’ and swears.”

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed. “And such a girl is put up for membership at our quiet old family country club.”

Anne shook her head, and laughed tearfully. “She’ll never be blackballed for that, Mamma! Nobody thinks anything about those things any more; and besides, she only does them because she thinks they’re ‘what goes.’ They aren’t what’s made the boys so wild over her!”

“Then what has?”

“Oh, it’s so crazy!” Anne cried. “I could imagine little boys of seven or even ten, being caught that way, at a children’s party, but to see grown men!”

“Anne!” Mrs. Cromwell contrived to smile, though rather dismally. “How are these ‘grown men’ caught by Miss Sallie Ealing?”

“Why, just by less than nothing, Mamma! Of course, she’s got a kind of style and anybody’d notice her anywhere, but what makes you notice her so much is her being so triumphant: the men are all rushing at her every instant, and that makes you look at her more than you would. But what started them to rushing and what keeps them going is the thing I feel I can never forgive them for. Mamma, I feel as if I could never respect a man again!”

“Remember your father,” Mrs. Cromwell said indulgently. “Your father——”

“No; if a man like Harrison Crisp can become just a girl’s slave on that account——” Anne interrupted herself. “Why, it’s like Circe’s cup!” she cried. “I suppose that meant Circe’s kiss, really.”

“They don’t do that, do they, Anne?”

“I don’t know,” Anne said. “It’s not that at first, anyhow.”

“Well, how does she enslave them?”

“It’s like this, Mamma. The first time I ever saw her, I was dancing with Harrison, and he happened to point her out to me. He’d just met her and didn’t take any interest in her at all. He really didn’t. Well, a minute or two later she danced near us and spoke to him over her partner’s shoulder as they passed us. ‘I heard something terrible about you!’ was what she said, and she danced on away, looking back at him over her shoulder. Pretty soon someone cut in and took me away, and Harrison went straight and cut in and danced with Sallie Ealing almost all the rest of the evening. The next day he and I were playing over the course and when we finished she was just starting out from the club in a car with one of the boys. She called back to Harrison, ‘I dreamed about you last night!’ and he was terribly silly: he kept calling after her, ‘What was the dream?’ And she kept calling back, ‘I’ll never tell you!’ Mamma, that’s what she does with them all.”

“Tells them she’s dreamed about them?”

“No,” Anne said. “That’s just a sample of her ‘line.’ When she dances near another girl and her partner, she’ll say to the other girl’s partner, ‘Got something queer to tell you,’ or ‘I heard something about you last night,’ or ‘Wait till you hear what I know about you,’ or something like that; and, of course, he’ll get rid of the girl he’s with as soon as he can and go to find out. She almost never passes a man at a dance, or on the links, without either calling to him if he’s not near her, or whispering to him if he is. It’s always some absolutely silly little mystery she makes up about him—and almost her whole stock in trade is that she’s heard something about ’em, or thought something curious about ’em, or dreamed about ’em. It’s always something about them, of course. Then they follow her around to find out, and she doesn’t tell ’em, so they keep on following her around, and she gets them so excited about themselves that then they get excited about her—and she makes ’em think she’s thinking about them mysteriously—and they get so they can’t see anybody but Sallie Ealing! They don’t know what a cheap bait she’s caught ’em with, Mamma;—they don’t even guess she’s used bait! That’s why I don’t feel as if I could ever respect a man again. And the unfairness of it is so strange! The rest of us could use those tricks if we were willing to be that cheap and that childish; but we can’t even tell the men that we wouldn’t stoop to do it! We can’t do anything because they’d think we’re jealous of her. What can we do, Mamma?”

Mrs. Cromwell sighed and shook her head. “I’m afraid a good many generations of girls have had their Sallie Ealings, dear.”

“You mean there isn’t anything we can do?” Anne asked, and she added, with a desolate laugh, “I just said that, myself. But men do things when they feel like this, don’t they, Mamma? Why is it a girl can’t? Why do I have to sit still and see men I’ve respected and looked up to and thought so wise and fine—why do I have to sit still and see them hoodwinked and played upon and carried off their feet by such silly little barefaced tricks, Mamma? And why don’t they see what it is, themselves, Mamma? Any girl or woman—the very stupidest—can see it, Mamma, so why doesn’t the cleverest man? Are men all just idiots, Mamma? Are they?”

This little tumult of hurried and emotional questions pressed upon the harassed mother for but a single reply. “Yes, dear,” she said. “They are. It’s a truth we have to find out, and the younger we are when we find out, the better for us. We have to learn to forgive them for it and to respect them for the intelligence they show in other ways—but about the Sallie Ealings and what we used to call ‘women’s wiles,’ we have to face the fact that men are—well, yes—just idiots!”

“All men, Mamma?”

“I’m afraid so!”

“And there’s nothing to do about it?”

“I don’t quite say that,” Mrs. Cromwell returned thoughtfully. “There’s one step I shall certainly be inclined to take. I’m certain these Ealing people would not make desirable members of the club and I——”

“No, no!” Anne cried, in terrified protest. “You mustn’t try to have them blackballed, Mamma. You couldn’t do a single thing about it that Harrison would hear of, because he’s proposed them himself, and he’d insist on knowing where the opposition came from. Don’t you see what he’d think? It would look that way to everybody else, too. Don’t you see, Mamma?”

Mrs. Cromwell was forced to admit her helplessness to help her daughter even by this stroke of warfare. “It’s true, I’m afraid, Anne. But what an outrageous thing it is! We can’t even take measures to protect a good old family institution like the Green Hills club from people who’ll spoil it for us—and all because a silly boy was made sillier by a tricky girl’s telling him she’d dreamed about him!”

“Yes,” Anne said, while new tears sidled down her cheeks;—“he must have been silly all the time. I didn’t think he was—not until this happened—but he must have been, since it could happen.” She put out a hand to her mother’s. “Mamma,” she said, piteously, “why does any one have to care what a silly person does? If he’s silly and I know it, why does it matter to me what he does? Why don’t I get over it?”

And with that, the sobbing she had so manfully withheld could be withheld no longer. Her mother soothed her in a mother’s way, but found nothing to say that could answer the daughter’s question. They had an unhappy half-hour before Anne was able to declare that she was ashamed of herself and apologize for “making such an absurd scene”; but after that she said she was “all right,” and begged her mother to go to bed. Mrs. Cromwell complied, and later, far in the night, came softly to Anne’s door and listened.

Anne’s voice called gently, “Mother?”

The door was unlocked, and Mrs. Cromwell went in. “Dearest, I’ve been thinking. You and I might take a trip somewhere abroad perhaps. Would you like to?”

“We can’t. We can’t even do that. Don’t you see if we went now it would look as if I couldn’t stand it to stay here? We can’t do anything, Mother!”

Mrs. Cromwell bent over the bed. “Anne, this isn’t serious, dear. It will pass, and you’ll forget it.”

“No. I think I must have idealized men, Mother. I believe I thought in my heart that they’re wiser than we are. Are they all such fools, Mother? That’s what I can’t get over. If you were in my place and Papa not engaged to you yet, and he saw Sallie Ealing and she tried for him—oh, Mamma, do you think that even Papa——”

Mrs. Cromwell responded with a too impulsive honesty; she gave it as her opinion that Sallie would have found Mr. Cromwell susceptible. “I’m afraid so, Anne,” she said. “Perhaps this Ealing girl’s way would be too crude for him now, at his age, but I shouldn’t like him to be exposed to her system in the hands of Madame de Staël, for instance. Somewhere in the world there may be a man who wouldn’t feel any fascination in it, but if there is he’d be a ‘superman,’ and we aren’t likely to meet him. You must go to sleep now.”

“I’ll try to, Mother,” the unhappy girl said obediently. “I’ll try not to think.”