Selina: Her Hopeful Efforts and Her Livelier Failures

by George Madden Martin

With this exception, Selina felt, everything was quite comme il faut, as Maude loved to say of an occasion, and even impressive and needless to say, gratifying. Everybody sat around, the open grate the center, so to speak, the firelight flickering on Auntie's especially burnished fender and coal-bucket and fire-irons.

By the connivance of the four, Selina, Juliette, Maud and Adele, Mr. Wingham was seated next Miss Boswell. He had shown brisk pleasure on being presented to tall and dashing Maud and seemed willing to linger and parry sallies with her; he had warmed, everybody warmed to Juliette; while within the minute he was taking issue on some general proposition with Adele. But these introductory passages over, they passed him on to his place for the evening.

Bliss, pretty, pouty boy, on whom Amanthus had been smiling since she dismissed Tommy, was sulky because she, from some perversity, was off to herself in an unillumined spot as it were, between the bookcase and the door. Yet she illumined it; she was a lovely creature.

"'Like sunshine in a shady spot,'" Selina and Adele who were near together heard Miss Boswell say to Mr. Wingham, and his attention thus directed to Amanthus, he heartily agreed.

Then Selina charmingly flushed beneath the crown of her fair hair, could she but have known it, and prettily anxious, became aware that Maud had coughed, was coughing again. It was the signal agreed upon. There came a rushing as of the seas in her ears, a sinking in the pit of her person. Had they allowed Maud to coerce them into something ill-advised again? Was Auntie right? Were they about to make themselves preposterous and ridiculous? And what had Culpepper said—Culpepper there across the circle next to Algy? That girls played at having a knowledge that men had? Was he laughing at them now with that same look of lenient enjoyment in his bold blue eyes that he usually gave to Auntie? Tears almost of anger were in her eyes.

Not at all! She had had these hideous moments preceding the actual plunge before, precursors always to the later joys of triumph. As, for example, when she used to lead in the debate at The Sappho, and at call for her secretarial report at the junior missionary society, and again at the moment of her figuring at her graduation. Surely she knew them for what they were now!

Maud had given definite instructions beforehand. "Let your start seem casual, Selina, the mere off-throw from passing reflections."

And, recalling this and drawing a restoring breath of confidence, Selina spoke to the circle of her guests, endeavoring to convey ease along with the proposition which was to furnish subject and substance for the conversazione, in a voice which would not be quite steady.

"But is there not a denial of the truth that the moral is necessarily part with the beautiful, in such phrases as 'art for art's sake,' 'beauty for the sake of beauty'? So Selina."

Maud, as per arrangement and program, came sweepingly to the retort direct, which she had taken from a volume belonging to The Sappho's library, called "Prepared Debates." As she had pointed out, there's nothing like getting the requisite impetus at the start!