Shotwell glanced at the fog and shrugged his shoulders: “She’s rather busy––as you say. No, I haven’t seen her. Besides, I’m rather out of my element among the people one runs into at her house. So I simply don’t go any more.”
“Palla’s parties are always amusing,” ventured Estridge.
“Very,” said the other, “but her guests keep you guessing.”
Estridge smiled: “Because they don’t conform to the established scheme of things?”
“Perhaps. The scheme of things, as it is, suits me.”
“But it’s interesting to hear other people’s views.”
“I’m fed up on queer views––and on queer people,” said Jim, with sudden and irritable emphasis. “Why, hang it all, Jack, when a fellow goes out among apparently well bred, decent people he takes it for granted that ordinary, matter of course social conventions prevail. But nobody can guess what notions are seething in the bean of any girl you talk to at Palla’s house!”
Estridge laughed: “What do you care, Jim?”
“Well, I wouldn’t care if they all didn’t seem so exactly like one’s own sort. Why, to look at them, talk to them, you’d never suppose them queer! The young girl you take in to dinner usually looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And the 169 chances are that she’s all for socialism, self-determination, trial marriages and free love!
“Hell’s bells! I’m no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous for a girl like Palla.”