"Plastic!" echoed Maud. "You mean hopeless! But turn about is fair play. Take the advice I offer you, and travel. If you say the word we'll start for Japan to-morrow. And you needn't touch a penny of your husband's money either, my child. I have enough for both of us."
"Maud, you're a darling." Dita smiled in warm appreciation. "But—"
"But, Dita," Maud's voice held both fear and appeal, "if you do stay here, you will not, you must not see Eugene Gresham."
Dita smiled at her again, inscrutably. "An idea has come to me," she said, quite irrelevantly, "a dazzling idea. I really believe that it is the solution of the whole matter."
She considered this dazzling idea, her eyes growing brighter every moment.
"Oh, Maud, Maud!" she cried, clasping her hands, "what an inspiration! I'm going on my own again. Yes, I am. Don't look so horrified. I know I've grouched and fussed a lot over my past efforts in that direction, but you see I tried to do things in a small way, cotillion favors and such, and it didn't suit me. It wasn't my métier, not my way. I loathe detail. I can do things on a big scale or not at all. You know that. And my present idea means the big scale. When I first came to New York I regarded it as the great adventure, but then I didn't know how to go about anything. I was as ignorant as a baby of everything—everything. The tremendous professional skill required, my own ineptitude, the utter inadequacy of my poor, amateur accomplishments, my entire ignorance of business methods, all frightened, dazed, stupefied me, but now, now, I just believe I'll have another try."
"Oh, what have you got in your head now?" cried Maud in frightened resignation.
"You see it's like this," Dita ignored the question and continued to follow her own train of thought. "New York demands one of two things of the stranger who comes knocking at her gates, either training or a new idea. She can take care of any trained person, but if she has to conduct the educational process, she does it with a club. Now I'm going back to her with my new idea. Oh, I was crushed a bit ago, but now I am really enjoying myself as I have not done since the first dazzle of marrying Cresswell and seeing his money turn itself so easily into the beautiful things I had longed for all my life. But I've been getting tireder and tireder of being the twittering canary in the gilded cage. Cresswell opened the door last night and now I'm going to fly put, but in a totally different direction from the one he expects me to take." She laughed delightedly. "Oh, do you think New York will listen to my new idea?"
"She'll listen to Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth," said Maud dryly. "It won't make much difference about the idea, whether it's new or old." She thought of a conversation Hepworth's friends had held at the wedding breakfast and sighed reminiscently. "I'm afraid you're making Cress rather a background."
"Why not?" said Dita cheerfully and defiantly. "Serves him right, going away in the fashion he did and putting me in such a position. 'Moses an' Aaron,' as my old mammy used to say, you needn't try to dissuade me. You'll be as crazy about the idea as I am when I unfold it to you. The twittering canary is going to hop out of the gilded cage, and build her own nest. It's the great adventure. It is to live. Won't Cresswell open those sleepy eyes of his when he sees this move of mine on the chessboard? I'm done with failure, this venture of ours is a success before it's begun."