"Now, see what you've done, Cato!" declaimed Cornelia, in one of those complacent greetings which only she could make sublime.
She fluttered Claude's note aloft and called out the sender's name for Robert's information.
Ignoring her, but grasping the import of the scene, Robert went over to Janet's side and asked her in all simplicity whether he could be of any service whatever.
But she, to hide her tears, turned decisively away from him. Robert gave her movement a totally different interpretation, drew back, and walked quickly out of the room.
III
The alarums and excursions for which Claude and Cornelia were responsible might well have monopolized Janet's mind. But her thoughts were kept in flux by a thunderstorm which threatened her peace from another quarter.
The new cloud on her horizon came from no less a person than Mrs. Howard Madison Grey, the wife of her employer.
Mrs. Grey served Janet as a symbol, a symbol opposed to the Outlaws. The Outlaws were a convenient symbol of the world within Kips Bay. Mrs. Grey was an equally pat symbol of the world without.
It amused Janet to study her own reactions to these two symbols and to analyze her experiences with the moral codes symbolized.
According to one of the primary conventions of the Outlaws, sex was anybody's to have and nobody's to hold; there was no recognized private property in sex. In Kips Bay, Janet had acted in the spirit (though not in the letter) of this convention. And the results had been disastrous.