Molly laughed:
"We're a hardened lot—some of us. But our most deadly fear is that the papers may not notice us. No matter what they say if they'll only say something!—that's our necessity and our unadmitted prayer. Because we've neither brains nor culture nor any distinguishing virtue or ability—and we're nothing—absolutely nothing unless the papers create us! Don't tell me that any one among us is afraid of publicity!—not in the particular circle where you and I and Langly and his aunt pursue our eccentric orbits!
"Plenty of wealthy and fashionable people dread publicity and shrink from it; plenty of them would gladly remain unchronicled and unsung. But it is not so among the fixed stars and planets and meteors and satellites of our particularly flamboyant constellation. I know. I also know that you don't really belong in it. But you'll either become accustomed to it or it will kill you if you don't drop—or soar, as you please—into some other section of eternal space."
She sat swinging her foot, flushed, animated, her eyes and colour brilliant—a slim, exquisitely groomed woman with all the superficial smoothness of a girl save for the wisdom in her eyes and in her smile, alas!
And the other's eyes reflected in their clear gray depths no such wisdom, only the haunting knowledge of sorrow and, vaguely, the inexplicable horror of man as he really is—or at least as she had only known him.
Still swinging her pretty foot, a deliberate smile edging her lips, Molly said:
"If you'll let me, I'll stand by you, darling."
"'If you'll let me, I'll stand by you, darling.'"