Half way down the room, behind one of the pieces of the smile, Mabel Dawson sized her up.
"Conceited as they're made. Because we know how to do our hair she thinks we're feeble-minded."
Jean began to talk simply and convincingly in a way that held her hearers but annoyed Mabel Dawson exceedingly.
"I don't wonder that her husband brought another woman into the house, if she always explained things to him as if he were two years old." Mabel then lost the drift of Jean's talk altogether while she tried to trace the marks of suffering on her face.
Sitting well down to the front and looking lovely in a soft lavender creation, Margaret Allen's mind was busy with the same problem. She too was searching Jean's face for lines of suffering and could not find them. A woman with Jean's past ought to look more as if she had gathered up the broken threads and gone on. But Jean must be the kind of woman who either never broke threads, or if she did, ripped out the ravelings and wove new ones. There was nothing sad about her. In fact her superb physique and very evident efficiency were rather hard. She would always know exactly what she wanted and just how to get it. She would walk straight to her point, in the low-heeled shoes that just missed being square-toed and common-sense.
A patter of hands broke in on Margaret's cogitations. She listened for a few moments. Jean was really making the subject interesting. A vague envy began to crystallize at the back of Margaret's mind. She did not want to dispose of garbage, but there were many things, in the last twelve years, that she had wanted to do and had had to let go because of Gregory and Puck. The chemicalization passed from envy of Jean to annoyance with Gregory. It never occurred to him that she had given up anything. She was never sure that he did not think she was a little stupid. His tolerance of The Fortnightly was insulting, and yet women like Jean Herrick thought it was worth while.
The meeting came to an end with sincere applause. Women gathered about and begged for another talk, and proved by their questions a real desire to do things besides hold meetings. Then two maids wheeled in tea, and gossip bubbled up.
Holding her cup and the last crumbs of rich cake, Jean succeeded in drawing to one side. Almost hidden behind an alabaster statue on an ebony pedestal, she was studying the faces about her, when a soft voice startled her so that she almost dropped the cup on the velvet rug.
"Oh, Mrs. Herrick, I just couldn't not speak to you." Margaret often gave her sentences small twists that ornamented them. Jean smiled.
"Was the urge as great as that, really?'