Mrs. Elliot was an attractive woman in middle life, of slim, graceful figure and vivacious manner. She had one son out in the world, and one in college, and lived in a charming house just off the Avenue, with an adored but generally invisible husband, who was engaged in business downtown. As a girl Constance Elliot had been on the stage, and had played smaller Shakespearean parts in the old Daly Company, but, bowing to the code of her generation, had abandoned her profession at marriage. Now, in middle life, too old to take up her calling again with any hope of success, yet with her mental activity unimpaired, she found in the Suffrage movement her one serious vocation.
“I am nearly fifty, Mrs. Byrd,” she said to Mary, “and have twenty good years before me. I like my friends, and am interested in philanthropy, but I am not a Jack-of-all-trades by temperament. I need work—a real job such as I had when the boys were little, or when I was a girl. We are all working hard enough to win the vote, but what we shall fill the hole in our time with when we have it, I don't know. It will be easy for the younger ones—but I suppose women like myself will simply have to pay the price of having been born of our generation. Some will find solace as grandmothers—I hope I shall. But my elder son, who married a pretty society girl, is childless, and my younger such a light-hearted young rascal that I doubt if he marries for years to come.”
Mary was much interested in this problem, which seemed more salient here than in her own class in England, in which social life was a vocation for both sexes.
At Mrs. Elliot's house she met many of the neighborhood's more conventional women, and began to have a great liking for these gently bred but broad-minded and democratic Americans. She also met a mixed collection of artists, actresses, writers, reformers and followers of various “isms”; for as president of a suffrage club it was Mrs. Elliot's policy to make her drawing rooms a center for the whole neighborhood. She was a charming hostess, combining discrimination with breadth of view; her Fridays were rallying days for the followers of many more cults than she would ever embrace, but for none toward which she could not feel tolerance.
At first Stefan, who, man-like, professed contempt for social functions, refused to accompany Mary to these at-homes. But after Mrs. Elliot's visit to the studio he conceived a great liking for her, and to Mary's delight volunteered to accompany her on the following Friday. Few misanthropes are proof against an atmosphere of adulation, and in this Mrs. Elliot enveloped Stefan from the moment of first seeing his Danaë. She introduced him as a genius—America's coming great painter, and he frankly enjoyed the novel sensation of being lionized by a group of clever and attractive women.
Mrs. Elliot affected house gowns of unusual texture and design, which flowed in adroitly veiling lines about her too slim form. These immediately attracted the attention of Stefan, who coveted something equally original for Mary. He remarked on them to his hostess on his second visit.
“Yes,” she said, “I love them. I am eclipsed by fashionable clothing. Felicity Berber designs all my things. She's ruinous,” with a sigh, “but I have to have her. I am a fool at dressing myself, but I have intelligence enough to know it,” she added, laughing.
“Felicity Berber,” questioned Stefan. “Is that a creature with Mongolian eyes and an O-shaped mouth?”
“What a good description! Yes—have you met her?”
“I haven't, but you will arrange it, won't you?” he asked cajolingly. “I saw a drawing of her—she's tremendously paintable. Do tell me about her. Wait a minute. I'll get my wife!”