When Selina, after the manner of her Ponce de Leon, returned fruitless from her quest, not of the golden fountain of youth, but of the golden fleece of independence, the cotillion long planned by Mrs. Harrison for Amanthus was just over, but the reception by the Carters to introduce Adele to their friends was yet to be. Maud had accused Selina of being absorbed by her own affairs and her own altered point of view. As chance or purpose, as the case may be, was to have it, Selina was to become absorbed for a time in the respective points of view of her four friends.

"I have accepted the Carter invitations for your aunt and your father and myself," said her mother the morning after Selina's return, as pleased as could be about it. "Your aunt's black velvet is always distinguished and elegant; no one would imagine it was bought for your father's and my wedding. At that time I said—you remember that I did, Ann Eliza—'why do you get velvet and black at that? You're still a handsome girl.' And your reply was, Ann Eliza—do you remember it?—'I'll live up to it, never fear, Lavinia, I won't be a girl forever!'"

Mamma went on happily: "I've looked over my mauve grenadine, and by cutting the tails off the basque and buying new gloves, it will do. And speaking of buying reminds me, you must have underwear with some wool in it, coming up this way from almost the tropics."

"And maybe a little wool in her stockings, Lavinia, don't you think?" added Auntie anxiously, "though we're having wonderfully mild and protracted autumn weather for the first day of November, to be sure."

"Now that I think about it," amended Mrs. Wistar, "we can't put heavy underwear on her until after this Carter affair. You will recall my regrets for you at once, of course, Selina. I'm glad we made you that one unqualified evening dress."

"And cape," from Auntie.

By a seemingly tacit consent everyone was very nice about Selina's humiliating return.

"I don't want you to think about that fifty dollars now," said Cousin Anna, "and I don't want you to ask Robert to return it for you. Pay it when you can."

The girls came over promptly and in a bunch. They were tactful and considerate. Only Maud made any direct allusion to her friend's unhappy failure. "We all have our regrettable moments," she said largely, embracing Selina and kissing her tenderly, as Juliette and Amanthus and Adele in turn released her, "our humiliating moments, I may say, in regard to myself. The other day I told the most distinguished man, come to preach at our church and staying with us, that I always know everything written by him for The Christian Herald, by its academic touch, and then went and looked up academic in the dictionary." Generous Maud! It was her way of comforting!

"Mamma sends her love," said Amanthus, "so much love!"

"We can't be sorry we've got you back, and we hope you won't require it of us," said Judy, dear little Judy. But she looked listless and she said it without her usual animation. Did the others look at her a little anxiously, a little solicitously, perhaps, or did Selina imagine it?

"I'm such a disappointment to Mamma and Grandmamma, Selina," said Adele, "thus far in what they're pleased to call my social start. I'm the square peg in the round hole, as I see it myself. If it isn't my physical elbows that stick out, it's my mental elbows, and they get on the nerves of my family even worse. I need you at home, and badly, to be sorry for me."

Several days after this Adele came over alone. "Come go back with me for dinner, Selina," she begged. "I haven't really seen you yet, and I've so missed having you to talk to. As I told you the other day, I'm such a disappointment to Mamma and Grandmamma. Why can't they let me alone? Why can't I be myself in my own way? Neither of my brothers was any older than I am now, when they were allowed to choose and follow their ways, Roswell to Tech, and Jim out West with our uncle in business."

As Selina, consenting, went to change her dress, she was thinking that even with no interference, it wasn't the simple matter to be one's self that Adele seemed to imply. For her own part she seemed to be the victim of interchangeable selves right now that arranged the matter of possession between them, with no respect at all for her wishes, the result being a sort of see-saw in her personality, up or down, buoyant or depressed, confident or deprecatory, according to the self in predominance at the moment.

The buoyant self right now since her return home, seemed born of a knowledge she felt almost guilty about admitting; she was prettier. She was the last person who ought to recognize it Mamma and Auntie would tell her if they suspected her of doing so, and she therefore would keep any show that she was conscious of it hidden. But the fact was there. She saw it in the eyes of her mother and aunt themselves; in the puzzled gazes of Maud and Juliette and Amanthus; in an unwilling admission from the eyes of Culpepper, who was bluntly opposed always to anybody or anything flattering her; in quick comprehension and acknowledgment in the glances of Adele.

Was Marcus right? Had her brief glimpse into life, her short temporary dependence upon herself, done it?

The knowledge of it, whatever the explanation, gave her new confidence and sudden brave carriage. Her color deepened and despite her cruel disappointment, which yet stung sharply, her eyes laughed and her step was tripping and light. The second day that she was home, she met a former acquaintance down street, Mr. Tuttle Jones, that paragon of correctness, and he stopped at her bow, a thing he never had done before, and with his eyes upon her face, shook hands and passed some of the gratifying nothings of pleasant interchange with her.

And here last night, the fourth since her return, he came to call. Papa opened the door to him, and in consequence his card had to go hastily into his pocket; but after all if you're poor, and she, Selina, and Papa and Mamma and Auntie were incontestably poor, the thing is to be frankly what you are and undisturbed about it! She was glad that she had arrived at this point. It made for self-respect!

And she could feel that on this occasion she had been pleasingly and successfully undisturbed. It was Sunday evening and nine o'clock when Mr. Jones came. She heard afterward from Amanthus and Adele, that as to day and hour, this was quite the thing of the moment to do, the en rÈgle thing, as Maudie put it. Algy Biggs was already there, calling, too, and apparently wanting to talk about Juliette; and why Juliette? But not being so given to the thing of the moment, he had come earlier.

"Papa is an admirable Crichton when it comes to opening doors," Selina said as she shook hands with Mr. Jones, and as she could feel, with complete success; "but I am an admirable Miss Crichton when it comes to other matters." And she took him and Algy, to whom the matter just had been proposed, on out to the pantry which was shabby but big and orderly, trust Auntie for that. And here from cold turkey and other choice bits left from Sunday dinner, they concocted a feast with hilarity and satisfaction.

But there was a second and disparaging self which alternated with this more confident and successful one. At the mere call to mind of certain people, Adele's mother and grandmother, for example, or of occasions connected with such people, the Carter reception about to be, as an instance, or of attitudes characteristic of such people, the Carter stress laid upon prominence and prosperity as a further example, at such recall Selina's second self came into its deplorable own, and the self of happier, buoyant mood went down.

And presto! assurance was gone, and she was Selina Wistar, unenviable person, limited and obscure, living in the small shabby house of the block, with a father always harrassed and poor; Selina Wistar unworthily ashamed of first one thing and another, as, at this particular moment, not so much Auntie's antiquated velvet as of her veneration for it, nor Mamma's grenadine with the tails cut off, as at her respect for it; and thus ashamed, the more ashamed that she was ashamed, she on whose account Papa and Mamma right now were the poorer, she who was in debt to Cousin Anna!

And in this fashion as she finished the changing of her older plaid dress for her newer cashmere and went into her mother's room to rejoin Adele, she found herself at the lowest bump of the see-saw of her personality upon the ground of self-abasement.

"The dress looks very well, Selina," said her mother. "I was always sorry we didn't see you in it before you went. It's a nice shade of blue, not too deep and not too washed out, and a good piece of cashmere. It was a bargain though I must say I'm always doubtful of bargains myself. The lace goes with it nicely. I was afraid it was too much of a bargain, too."

"I'm glad we left the waist a little open at the throat," said Auntie. "Lavinia, I do believe it's a trifle too long in the skirt. Still we did very well with it; it hasn't that impressed, homemade look I deplore, one bit."

A moment later and Selina and Adele were crossing the street through the dusk, with a wave of their hands back to Mamma and Auntie at their windows.