“Just by way of formality,” David said, “and not because I think any one present”—he smiled on the five friends grouped about his dinner table—“still takes our old resolution seriously, I should like to be released from the anti-matrimonial pledge that I signed eight years ago this November. I have no announcement to make as yet, but when I do wish to make an announcement—and I trust to have the permission granted very shortly—I want to be sure of my technical right to do so.”

“Gosh all Hemlocks!” Jimmie exclaimed in a tone of such genuine confusion that it raised a shout of laughter. “I never thought of that.”

“Nor I,” said Peter. “I never signed any pledge to that effect.”

“We left you out of it, Old Horse, regarding you as a congenital celibate anyway,” Jimmie answered. 252

“Some day soon you will understand how much you wronged me,” Peter said with a covert glance at Beulah.

“I wish I could say as much,” Jimmie sighed, “since this is the hour of confession I don’t mind adding that I hope I may be able to soon.”

Gertrude clapped her hands softly.

“Wonderful, wonderful!” she cried. “We’ve the makings of a triple wedding in our midst. Look into the blushing faces before us and hear the voice that breathed o’er Eden echoing in our ears. This is the most exciting moment of my life! Girls, get on your feet and drink to the health of these about-to-be Benedicts. Up in your chairs,—one slipper on the table. Now!”—and the moment was saved.

Gertrude had seen Margaret’s sudden pallor and heard the convulsive catching of her breath,—Margaret rising Undine-like out of a filmy, pale green frock, with her eyes set a little more deeply in the shadows than usual. Her quick instinct to the rescue was her own salvation.

David was on his feet.

“On behalf of my coadjutors,” he said, “I thank you. All this is extremely premature for me, and 253 I imagine from the confusion of the other gentlemen present it is as much, if not more so, for them. Personally I regret exceedingly being unable to take you more fully into my confidence. The only reason for this partial revelation is that I wished to be sure that I was honorably released from my oath of abstinence. Hang it all! You fellows say something,” he concluded, sinking abruptly into his chair.

“Your style always was distinctly mid-Victorian,” Jimmie murmured. “I’ve got nothing to say, except that I wish I had something to say and that if I do have something to say in the near future I’ll create a real sensation! When Miss Van Astorbilt permits David to link her name with his in the caption under a double column cut in our leading journals, you’ll get nothing like the thrill that I expect to create with my modest announcement. I’ve got a real romance up my sleeve.”

“So’ve I, Jimmie. There is no Van Astorbilt in mine.”

“Some simple bar-maid then? A misalliance in our midst. Now about you, Peter?”

“The lady won’t give me her permission to 254 speak,” Peter said. “She knows how proud and happy I shall be when I am able to do so.”

Beulah looked up suddenly.

“It is better we should marry,” she said. “I didn’t realize that when I exacted that oath from you. It is from the intellectual type that the brains to carry on the great work of the world must be inherited.”

“I pass,” Jimmie murmured. “Where’s the document we signed?”

“I’ve got it. I’ll destroy it to-night and then we may all consider ourselves free to take any step that we see fit. It was really only as a further protection to Eleanor that we signed it.”

“Eleanor will be surprised, won’t she?” Gertrude suggested. Three self-conscious masculine faces met her innocent interrogation.

“Eleanor,” Margaret breathed, “Eleanor.”

“I rather think she will,” Jimmie chuckled irresistibly, but David said nothing, and Peter stared unseeingly into the glass he was still twirling on its stem.

“Eleanor will be taken care of just the same,” Beulah said decisively. “I don’t think we need even go through the formality of a vote on that.” 255

“Eleanor will be taken care of,” David said softly.

The Hutchinsons’ limousine—old Grandmother Hutchinson had a motor nowadays—was calling for Margaret, and she was to take the two other girls home. David and Jimmie—such is the nature of men—were disappointed in not being able to take Margaret and Gertrude respectively under their accustomed protection.

“I wanted to talk to you, Gertrude,” Jimmie said reproachfully as she slipped away from his ingratiating hand on her arm.

“I thought I should take you home to-night, Margaret,” David said; “you never gave me the slip before.”

“The old order changeth,” Gertrude replied lightly to them both, as she preceded Margaret into the luxurious interior.

“It’s Eleanor,” Gertrude announced as the big car swung into Fifth Avenue.

“Which is Eleanor?” Margaret cried hysterically.

“What do you mean?” Beulah asked.

“Jimmie or David—or—or both are going to marry Eleanor. Didn’t you see their faces when Beulah spoke of her?” 256

“David wants to marry Eleanor,” Margaret said quietly. “I’ve known it all winter—without realizing what it was I knew.”

“Well, who is Jimmy going to marry then?” Beulah inquired.

“Who is Peter going to marry for that matter?” Gertrude cut in. “Oh! it doesn’t make any difference,—we’re losing them just the same.”

“Not necessarily,” Beulah said. “No matter what combinations come about, we shall still have an indestructible friendship.”

“Indestructible friendship—shucks,” Gertrude cried. “The boys are going to be married—married—married! Marriage is the one thing that indestructible friendships don’t survive—except as ghosts.”

“It should be Peter who is going to marry Eleanor,” Margaret said. “It’s Peter who has always loved her best. It’s Peter she cares for.”

“As a friend,” Beulah said, “as her dearest friend.”

“Not as a friend,” Margaret answered softly, “she loves him. She has always loved him. It comes early sometimes.”

“I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe it.”

“I believe it,” Gertrude said. “I hadn’t thought 257 of it before. Of course, it must be Peter who is going to marry her.”

“If it isn’t we’ve succeeded in working out a rather tragic experiment,” Margaret said, “haven’t we?”

“Life is a tragic experiment for any woman,” Gertrude said sententiously.

“Peter doesn’t intend to marry Eleanor,” Beulah persisted. “I happen to know.”

“Do you happen to know who he is going to marry?”

“Yes, I do know, but I—I can’t tell you yet.”

“Whoever it is, it’s a mistake,” Margaret said. “It’s our little Eleanor he wants. I suppose he doesn’t realize it himself yet, and when he does it will be too late. He’s probably gone and tied himself up with somebody entirely unsuitable, hasn’t he, Beulah?”

“I don’t know,” Beulah said; “perhaps he has. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“It’s the way to think of it, I know.” Margaret’s eyes filled with sudden tears. “But whatever he’s done it’s past mending now. There’ll be no question of Peter’s backing out of a bargain—bad or good, and our poor little kiddie’s got to suffer.” 258

“Beulah took it hard,” Gertrude commented, as they turned up-town again after dropping their friend at her door. The two girls were spending the night together at Margaret’s. “I wonder on what grounds. I think besides being devoted to Eleanor, she feels terrifically responsible for her. She isn’t quite herself again either.”

“She is almost, thanks to Peter.”

“But—oh! I can’t pretend to think of anything else,—who—who—who—are our boys going to marry?”

“I don’t know, Gertrude.”

“But you care?”

“It’s a blow.”

“I always thought that you and David—”

Margaret met her eyes bravely but she did not answer the implicit question.

“I always thought that you and Jimmie—” she said presently. “Oh! Gertrude, you would have been so good for him.”

“Oh! it’s all over now,” Gertrude said, “but I didn’t know that a living soul suspected me.”

“I’ve known for a long time.”

“Are you really hurt, dear?” Gertrude whispered as they clung to each other. 259

“Not really. It could have been—that’s all. He could have made me care. I’ve never seen any one else whom I thought that of. I—I was so used to him.”

“That’s the rub,” Gertrude said, “we’re so used to them. They’re so—so preposterously necessary to us.”

Late that night clasped in each other’s arms they admitted the extent of their desolation. Life had been robbed of a magic,—a mystery. The solid friendship of years of mutual trust and understanding was the background of so much lovely folly, so many unrealized possibilities, so many nebulous desires and dreams that the sudden dissolution of their circle was an unthinkable calamity.

“We ought to have put out our hands and taken them if we wanted them,” Gertrude said, out of the darkness. “Other women do. Probably these other women have. Men are helpless creatures. They need to be firmly turned in the right direction instead of being given their heads. We’ve been too good to our boys. We ought to have snitched them.”

“I wouldn’t pay that price for love,” Margaret 260 said. “I couldn’t. By the time I had made it happen I wouldn’t want it.”

“That’s my trouble too,” Gertrude said. Then she turned over on her pillow and sobbed helplessly. “Jimmie had such ducky little curls,” she explained incoherently. “I do this sometimes when I think of them. Otherwise, I’m not a crying woman.”

Margaret put out a hand to her; but long after Gertrude’s breath began to rise and fall regularly, she lay staring wide-eyed into the darkness.