“Don’t I know it?  Oh, Margaret, don’t I know it,” cried the other with such feverish energy that Margaret regarded her wonderingly.  For all her exploiting of the Zenith Club of Fairbridge, she herself, unless she were the main figure at the helm, could realise nothing in it so exceedingly inspiring, but it was otherwise with Annie.  It was quite conceivable that had it not been for the Zenith Club, she never would have grown to her full mental height.  Annie Eustace had a mind of the sequential order.  By subtle processes, unanalysable even by herself, even the record of Miss Bessy Dicky started this mind upon momentous trains of thought.  Unquestionably the Zenith Club acted as a fulminate for little Annie Eustace.  To others it might seem, during some of the sessions, as a pathetic attempt of village women to raise themselves upon tiptoes enough to peer over their centuries of weedy feminine growth; an attempt which was as futile, and even ridiculous, as an attempt of a cow to fly.  But the Zenith Club justified its existence nobly in the result of little Annie Eustace, if in no other, and it, no doubt, justified itself in others.  Who can say what that weekly gathering meant to women who otherwise would not move outside their little treadmill of household labour, what uplifting, if seemingly futile grasps at the great outside of life?  Let no one underrate the Women’s Club until the years have proven its uselessness.

“I am so sorry about Lydia Greenway,” said Annie, and this time she did not irritate Margaret.

“It does seem as if one were simply doomed to failure every time one really made an effort to raise standards,” said Margaret.

Then it was that Annie all unconsciously sowed a seed which led to strange, and rather terrifying results.  “It would be nice,” said little Annie, “if we could get Miss Martha Wallingford to read a selection from Hearts Astray at a meeting of the club.  I read a few nights ago, in a paper I happened to pick up at Alice’s, that she was staying in New York at the Hollingsgate.  Her publishers were to give her a dinner last night, I believe.”

Margaret Edes started.  “I had not seen that,” she said.  Then she added in a queer brooding fashion, “That book of hers had an enormous sale.  I suppose her publishers feel that they owe it to her to give her a good time in New York.  Then, too, it will advertise Hearts Astray.”

“Did you like the book?” asked Annie rather irrelevantly.  Margaret did not reply.  She was thinking intently.  “It would be a great feature for the club if we could induce her to give a reading,” she said at length.

“I don’t suppose it would be possible,” replied Annie.  “You know they say she never does such things, and is very retiring.  I read in the papers that she was, and that she refused even to speak a few words at the dinner given in her honour.”

“We might ask her,” said Margaret.

“I am sure that she would not come.  The paper stated that she had had many invitations to Women’s Clubs and had refused.  I don’t think she ought because she might be such a help to other women.”