which nobody else has and it’s our role to be secretive about them!  And we have invented a new sort of ‘ribbon sandwich.’  Did you ever hear of a ribbon sandwich?  If not, you must be told that it consists of layers and layers of thin slices of bread all pressed down together, with ground nuts or dressed lettuce in between.  Each entertainer astonishes her guests with a new variety.  That furnishes conversation for several minutes.

“How long can I stand it, Honora, my dear old defender of freedom?  The classrooms are mine no more; the campus is a departed glory; I shall no longer sing the ‘Alma Mater’ with you when the chimes ring at ten.  The whole challenge of the city is missing.  Nothing opposes me, there is no task for me to do.  I must be supine, acquiescent, smiling, non-essential.  I am like a runner who has trained for a race, and, ready for the speeding, finds that no race is on.  But I’ve no business to be surprised.  I knew it would be like this, didn’t I? the one thing is to ¸make and keep mummy happy.  She needs me so much.  And I am happy to be with her.  Write me often—­write me everything.  Gods, how I’d like a walk and talk with you!”

Mrs. Barrington did not attempt to conceal her interest in the letters which Ray McCrea wrote her daughter.  She was one of those women who thrill at a masculine superscription on a letter.  Perhaps she got more satisfaction out of these not too frequent missives than Kate did herself.  While the writer didn’t precisely say that he counted on Kate to supply the woof of the fabric of life, that expectation made itself evident between the lines to Mrs. Barrington’s sentimental perspicacity.

Kate answered his letters, for it was pleasant to have a masculine correspondent.  It provided a needed stimulation.  Moreover, in the back of her mind she knew that he presented an avenue of escape if Silvertree and home became unendurable.  It seemed piteous enough that her life with her parents should so soon have become a mere matter of duty and endurance, but there was a feeling of perpetually treading on eggs in the Barrington house.  Kate could have screamed with exasperation as one eventless day after another dawned and the blight of caution and apprehension was never lifted from her mother and Martha.  She writhed with shame at the sight of her mother’s cajolery of the tyrant she served—­and loved.  To have spoken out once, recklessly, to have entered a wordy combat without rancor and for the mere zest of tournament, to have let the winnowing winds of satire blow through the house with its stale sentimentalities and mental attitudes, would have reconciled her to any amount of difference in the point of view.  But the hushed voice and covertly held position afflicted her like shame.

Were all women who became good wives asked to falsify themselves?  Was furtive diplomacy, or, at least, spiritual compromise, the miserable duty of woman?  Was it her business to placate her mate, and, by exercising the cunning of the weak, to keep out from under his heel?