It was not for a day or two that I was able to compare notes with Mollie.
“Well,” I said, joining her on the terrace before dinner, “ça y est.”
“It’s extraordinary,” said Mollie. “Everything is different. I myself am different. I feel, for one thing, as if I’d become clever to match my clothes. It would be almost humiliating to have the mere clothes make so much difference and every one change so to me unless I could really feel that I’d changed, too.”
“You’re staked. I told you how it would be.”
“And I owe it all to you. It’s a wonderfully sustaining feeling to be staked; secure, peaceful. Such a funny change, Judith, is little Milly! Have you noticed? She came up to me when I was walking this afternoon and linked her arm in mine, and in ten minutes was confiding in me all about her perplexed love-affairs, as if we’d been old friends.” “Yes, she would. She loves to tell people about her love-affairs.”
“But I couldn’t have imagined that she was really so ingenuous; for, in a sense, she is ingenuous.”
“Exceedingly ingenuous when she isn’t exceedingly sophisticated; I think one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with the Milly type is that in a week’s time she may forget that she ever confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. Her ingenuousness is a form of presumptuousness.”
“Yes, I think I saw that. I’m beginning to see so many things—far more things than I’ll ever have use for on a chicken-farm, Judith.” And Mollie laughed a little.
“And what does your husband say?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve not seen much of him, you know. But I’m sure he likes it awfully, the way I look.”