It was a situation she had but dimly realized when she first met Robert Lloyd. His sensible views and galvanic realism had startled her out of her half-hearted acceptance of a decrepit tradition and carried her at one bound from the shadowy Brooklyn existence of the age of Praise-God-Barebones to the vivid actuality of the age of the airplane. The first novelty of contemporary life had been overwhelming. She felt as though she had lost consciousness in the seventeenth century and, like the fabled princess, had lain in a twilight sleep until Robert Lloyd had awakened her to the throb and stir of the twentieth century.
Her friendship with Robert had begun shortly after the end of the war, the great World War from which the Barrs had learnt as much as a blind man learns from a mirror.
Chance had next thrown her into the arms of Emily's classmate, Cornelia Covert. Cornelia had taken her in hand and brought her into the free and easy atmosphere of the Lorillard model tenements in Kips Bay. Her furtive visits to Cornelia's flat had led her by gradual stages into the stress and clash of the metropolis until, what with one new experience and another, she began to distinguish the trumpet-tongued voices of her own generation and to feel in her soul the resurgent willfulness of the modern age.
IV
And now, here she stood, the fire of life stirring her blood, the long arm of her mother's power fettering her movements. If only she were in Emily's shoes! Emily had been sent to college and had later achieved economic independence in the profession of high school teacher. But Emily had always had an instinct for taking care of herself. Janet wished she had half her sister's practical sense, and bitterly reproached herself for having been fool enough to yield to her mother's hankering after gentility. It was Mrs. Barr's belief that the family prestige would fall irrecoverably below the rarified heights where the Cabots or the Saltonstalls were presumed to move, unless one daughter, at least, was kept free from the lower class stigma of earning her own living.
Thus, under pressure, Janet had stayed home to become a fine lady, although the limited circumstances of the Barrs obliged her, in effect, to become a domestic servant. For a year past, however, she had been laying desperate plans for going out on her own.
"Hello, little girl, good morning!" interrupted a cheery voice at her side.
"Good morning, father," replied Janet, to a tall, well-preserved, stately man who kissed her very affectionately.
"Your mother sent for me, Janet," said Mr. Barr anxiously. "What's the matter?"
"I'm the matter. She has been pitching into me for receiving an invitation to a masked ball. I've been wasting the Lord's time!"