Mrs. Robson held up a filmy evening gown of black net embroidered with a rich design of dull gold.  “Isn’t this heavenly?” she demanded.  “And it will just fit you, Claire.  I think Gertrude has spread herself this time.”

“Yes, on finery, mother.  But didn’t she send anything sensible?  What possessed her to load us up with a lot of things we can never possibly get a chance to wear?”

Claire had not meant to be disagreeable, but there was rancor in her voice.  Mrs. Robson cast aside the dress with the carelessness of a spoiled favorite; she always adapted her manner to the tone of her background.

“Claire Robson!” she cried, good-naturedly.  “You’re a regular old woman!  I’m sure I haven’t much to be cheerful about, but I just won’t let anything down me!...  If I wanted to, I could give up right now.  Where would we have been, I’d like to know, if I hadn’t held my head up?  Goodness knows, my folks didn’t help me.  If they had had their way, I’d been out manicuring people’s nails and washing heads for a living.  And you in an orphan-asylum!  That’s what my people did for me!  As it is, they shoved you out to work.  What chance have you of meeting nice people?  No, Claire, I don’t care how they have treated me, but they might have given you a chance.  I’ll never forgive them for that!...  I thought last night when I was talking to Mrs. Condor and watching you and Mr. Stillman how nice it would have been if....  Oh, that reminds me!  Who do you think has been here to-day?...  Mrs. Towne!  She came to apologize about asking us to move our seats the other night. She knows the Stillmans well.  The old people were pillars of the Second Church in the ’sixties.  I fancy he is dancing about that Mrs. Condor’s heels a bit.  Of course, as Mrs. Towne said, she wouldn’t be likely to make herself a permanent feature of Second Church entertainments.  But now in war-times anything is possible.  Mrs. Towne was telling me all about Stillman and his wife.  I should have remembered, but somehow I forgot.  Get your things off and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Claire handed her mother the package of pastries.  “I heard about it to-day,” she said, coldly.

“But Mrs. Towne knows the whole thing from A to Z,” insisted Mrs. Robson, genially.

“I’m not interested in the details,” Claire returned, doggedly.

Mrs. Robson’s face wore a puzzled, almost a harried, expression.  Claire moved away.  Her mother gave a shrug and renewed her efforts to drag further finery from the mysterious depths of the treasure-box.  Her daughter cast a last incurious glance back.  The glow on Mrs. Robson’s face, which Claire had mistaken for youth, seemed now a thing hectic and unpleasant, and gave an uncanny sense of a skeleton sitting among gauds and baubles.

A feeling of isolation swept Claire, such as she had never experienced.  The person who should have been closest suddenly had become a stranger....  She went into her room and closed the door.