"It's so fearfully old-fashioned, Victorian, to be simple nowadays," she laughed.
"That's it," he cried. "The terror of your modern hostess, simplicity. You can't go out to dine unless some madwoman drags you away from your coffee to the auction table, where other madmen and madwomen scowl at you all the evening over their cards. Or else they dance. Dance! Dance! Hop! Skip! Not like joyous gamboling lambs but with set faces, as though there was nothing else in the world but the martyrdom of their feet. Mad! All mad! Please don't tell me that you dance, Miss Habberton."
"I do," she laughed, "and I love it."
"Youth!" Jack sighed and relapsed into silence.
The evening passed in general conversation, interesting conversation which the world, it seems, has come to think is almost a lost art, not the least interesting part of which was Una's contribution on some of the lighter aspects of Blank Street. And I couldn't help comparing again the philosophy of this girl, the philosophy of helpfulness, with the bestial selfishness of the point of view of the so-called Freudians who, as I have been credibly informed, only live to glut themselves with the filth of their own baser instincts. Self-elimination as against self-expression, or since we are brute-born, merely self-animalization! Una Habberton's philosophy and Marcia Van Wyck's! Any but a blind man could run and read, or if need be, read and run.
Mrs. Habberton was tired and went up early, her daughter accompanying her. I saw Jerry eyeing the girl rather wistfully at the foot of the stair. I think he was pleading with her to come down again but she only smiled at him brightly and I heard her say, "Tomorrow, Jerry."
"Shall we fish?"
"That will be fine."
"Just you and I?"
"If you think," and she laughed with careless gayety, "if you think Marcia won't object."