Mrs. Carey stared at her.
"Why not?" she asked sharply. "God gives us brains; we use them. God gives us strength; we use it. God gives us good looks; why shouldn't we use them? As long as this is a man-ruled world, feminine good looks will assay higher than feminine brains. If you don't believe it, compare the incomes received by the greatest women novelists, artists, doctors, lawyers, with the incomes received by women who have no brains at all, but whose beauty makes them attractive in moving pictures or upon the stage. Beauty is an asset that mustn't be ignored, my dear Miss Deane. And you have it. Have it? Indeed you have! Didn't our hitherto immune David become infected with the virus of love the moment he saw you?"
Clancy looked prim.
"I'm sure," she said, almost rebukingly, "that Mr. Randall couldn't have done anything like that—so soon."
Mrs. Carey laughed.
"I'll forgive you because of your last two words, my dear. They prove that you're not the little prig that you sound. Why, you know that David is extremely interested. And you are interested yourself. Otherwise, you would not be jealous of me."
"Jealous?" Clancy was indignant.
Mrs. Carey smiled.
"That's what I said. When you recognized him in the painting— My dear, I'm too old for David. I'm thirty-one. Besides, I have a husband living. You need not worry."
She rose, and before Clancy could frame any reply, threw an arm about the girl's shoulders and led her from the studio. Descending the two flights of stairs to the street door, Clancy caught a glimpse of a lovely boudoir, and a drawing-room whose huge grand piano and subdued coloring of decoration lived up to her ideals of what society knew as correct. The studio on the top floor might be a workroom, but the rest of the house was a place that, merely to own, thought Clancy, was to be assured of happiness.