"You may believe it, Valerie. Men are almost never single-minded; women are—almost always. You see what chance for happiness we have? But it's the truth, and the world has been made that way. It's a man's world, Valerie. I don't think there's much use for us to fight against it…. She sat very silent for a while, close to Valerie, her hot face on the younger girl's shoulder. Suddenly she straightened up and dried her eyes naïvely on the sleeve of her kimona.
"Goodness!" she said, "I almost forgot!"
And a moment later Valerie heard her at the telephone:
"Is that you, John?"
* * * * *
"Have you remembered to take your medicine?"
* * * * *
"How perfectly horrid of you! Take it at once! It's the one in the brown bottle—six drops in a wineglass of water—"
CHAPTER XII
Mrs. Hind-Willet, born to the purple—or rather entitled to a narrow border of discreet mauve on all occasions of ceremony in Manhattan, was a dreamer of dreams. One of her dreams concerned her hyphenated husband, and she put him away; another concerned Penrhyn Cardemon; and she woke up. But the persistent visualisation, which had become obsession, of a society to be formed out of the massed intellects of Manhattan regardless of race, morals, or previous condition of social servitude—a gentle intellectual affinity which knew no law of art except individual inspiration, haunted her always. And there was always her own set to which she could retreat if desirable.