Mrs. Dickett here intervened with news of Molly, and Eleanor's eyebrows lifted.
"You don't mean to say she's living alone there?"
Mrs. Dickett nodded uncertainly.
"Really, mother, I must say! She must be crazy. It's not right at all, and I'm sure George wouldn't like it."
"She's nearly twenty-seven," Kathryn put in coldly.
"As if that had anything to do with it! I'm going down to see her."
It was certainly unfortunate that she should have gone unheralded. The first wave of classical dancing had begun to lap the shores of New York society, and Molly's paper had got the first amazing pictures, the first technical chit-chat of "plastique" and "masque" and "flowing line." Behold Mrs. Eleanor then, tired and mussed with shopping, dyspeptic from unassimilated restaurant-lunching (and a little nervous at her task, when actually confronted with it), staring petrified at Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman, swayed and whirled and beckoned. A slender spiral of smoke rose from the incense bowl before her: the odour hung heavy in the room. Three or four women (much better gowned than Eleanor) and a dozen men applauded from the drawing-room; a strange-looking youth with a shock of auburn hair drew from a violin sounds which it required no knowledge of technique to feel extraordinarily poignant and moving. All but the dancer were smoking, and Molly sat on the floor (in copper-coloured chiffon, too!) her hands clasped about her knees, a cigarette in an amber holder between her lips and enunciated clearly,
"Bully!"
In describing matters afterward Eleanor referred to Molly's reception of her as brazen. There is no reason to believe that this word has any relation to Molly's state of mind: she saw nothing to be brazen about. When she said, "How lucky you dropped in today, sis!" she unaffectedly meant it.
"Well, rather!" one of the young men replied. "Won't you have something, Mrs. Er—Oh, yes—Farwell? Rhine wine cup, what?"