With her mother away on a wedding-trip with Mr. Moses Feldt, Linda was suddenly projected into the companionship of his two daughters. One, as he had said, was light, but a different fairness from Mrs. Condon's—richly thick, like honey; while Judith, the elder, who must have been twenty, was dark in skin, in everything but her eyes, which were a contrasting ashen-violet. She spoke at once of Linda's flawless whiteness:

“A magnolia,” she said, in a deliberate dark voice; “you are quite a gorgeous child. Do you mind my saying that your clothes are rather quaint? They aren't inevitable, and yours ought to be that.”

They were at lunch in the Feldt dining-room, an interior of heavy ornately carved black wood, panels of Chinese embroidery in imperial yellow, and a neutral mauve carpet. The effect, with glittering iridescent pyramids of glass, massive frosted repoussÉ silver, burnished gold-plate and a wide table decoration of orchids and fern, was tropical and intense. It was evident to Linda that the Feldts were very rich indeed.

The entire apartment resembled the dining-room, while the building itself filled a whole city block, with a garden and fountains like an elaborate public square. Linda, however, wasn't particularly impressed by such show; she saw that Judith and Pansy had expected that of her; but she was determined not to exhibit a surprise that would imply any changes in her mother's and her condition. In addition, Linda calmly took such surroundings for granted. Her primary conception of possible existence was elegance; its necessity had so entered into her being that it had departed from her consciousness.

“I must take you to Lorice,” Judith continued; “she will know better than any one else what you ought to have. You seem terribly pure—at first. But you're not a snowdrop; oh, no—something very rare in a conservatory. Much better style than your mother.”

“I hope you won't mind Judith,” Pansy put in; “she's always like that.” A silence followed in which they industriously dipped the leaves of mammoth artichokes into a buttery sauce. Linda, as customary, said very little, she listened with patient care to the others and endeavored to arrive at conclusions. She liked Pansy, who was as warm and simple as her father. Judith was harder to understand. She was absorbed in color and music, and declared that ugliness gave her a headache at once. Altogether, Linda decided, she was rather silly, especially about men; and at times her emotions would rise beyond control until she wept in a thin hysterical gasping.

The room where, mostly, they sat was small, but with a high ceiling, and hung in black, with pagoda-like vermilion chairs. The light, in the evening, was subdued; and Pansy and Judith, in extremely clinging vivid dresses, the former's hair piled high in an amber mass and Judith's drawn severely across her ears, were lovely. Linda thought of the tropical butterflies of the river Amazon, of orchids like those always on the dining-room table. A miniature grand piano stood against the drapery, and Judith often played. Linda learned to recognize some of the composers. Pansy liked best the modern waltzes; Judith insisted that Richard Strauss was incomparable; but Linda developed an overwhelming preference for Gluck. The older girl insisted that this was an affectation; for a while she tried to confuse Linda's knowledge; but finally, playing the airs of “Orpheus and Eurydice,” she admitted that the latter was sincere.

“They sound so cool,” Linda said in a clear and decided manner.

There was a man with them, and he shook his head in a mock sadness. “So young and yet so formal. If, with the rest, you had Judith's temperament, you would be the most irresistible creature alive. For see, my dear child, as it is you stir neither tenderness nor desire; you are remote and perfect, and faintly wistful. I can't imagine being human or even comfortable with you about. Then, too, you have too much wisdom.”

“She is frightful,” Pansy agreed; “she's never upset nor her hair a sight; and, above all else, Linda won't tell you a thing.”

“Some day,” Judith informed them from the rippling whisper of the piano, “she will be magnificently loved.”

“Certainly,” the man continued; “but what will Linda, Linda Condon, give in return?”

“It's a mistake to give much,” Linda said evenly.

“No, no, no!” Judith cried. “Give everything; spend every feeling, every nerve.”

“You are remarkable, of course; almost no women have the courage of their emotions.” His name was Reynold Chase, a long thin grave young man in a dinner coat, who wrote brilliant and successful comedies. “Yet Linda isn't parsimonious.” He turned to her. “Just what are you? What do you think of love?”

“I haven't thought about it much,” she replied slowly. “I'm not sure that I know what it means. At least it hasn't anything to do with marriage—”

“Ah!” he interrupted her.

Her usually orderly mind grew confused; it eddied as though with the sound of the piano. “It is not marriage,” she vaguely repeated her mother's instruction. Reynold Chase supported her.

“That destroys it,” he asserted. “This love is as different as possible from the ignominious impulse eternally tying the young into knots. It's anti-social.”

“How stupid you are, Reynold,” Pansy protested. “If you want to use those complicated words take Judith into the drawing-room. I'm sure Linda is dizzy, too.”

The latter's mental confusion lingered; she had a strong sense of having heard Reynold Chase say these strange things long before. Judith left the piano, sat beside him, and he lightly kissed her. A new dislike of Judith Feldt deepened in Linda's being. She had no reason for it, but suddenly she felt absolutely opposed to her. The manner in which Judith rested against the man by her was very distasteful. It offended Linda inexplicably; she wanted to draw into an infinity of distance from all contact with men and life.

She didn't even want to make one of those marriages that had nothing to do with love, but was only a sensible arrangement for the securing of gowns and velvet hangings and the luxury of enclosed automobiles. Suddenly she felt lonely, and hoped that her mother would come back soon.

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