“Ah!  So few women realize how they actually do look.  Haze Ruff could tell them.”

“Haze Ruff.  Who in the world is he or she?” asked Eleanor.

“Haze Ruff is a he, all right,” replied Carley, grimly.

“Well, who is he?”

“A sheep-dipper in Arizona,” answered Carley, dreamily.

“Humph!  And what can Mr. Ruff tell us?”

“He told me I looked like one of the devil’s angels—­and that I dressed to knock the daylights out of men.”

“Well, Carley Burch, if that isn’t rich!” exclaimed Eleanor, with a peal of laughter.  “I dare say you appreciate that as an original compliment.”

“No. . . .  I wonder what Ruff would say about jazz—­I just wonder,” murmured Carley.

“Well, I wouldn’t care what he said, and I don’t care what you say,” returned Eleanor.  “The preachers and reformers and bishops and rabbis make me sick.  They rave about jazz.  Jazz—­the discordant note of our decadence!  Jazz—­the harmonious expression of our musicless, mindless, soulless materialism!—­The idiots!  If they could be women for a while they would realize the error of their ways.  But they will never, never abolish jazz—­ never, for it is the grandest, the most wonderful, the most absolutely necessary thing for women in this terrible age of smotheration.”

“All right, Eleanor, we understand each other, even if we do not agree,” said Carley.  “You leave the future of women to chance, to life, to materialism, not to their own conscious efforts.  I want to leave it to free will and idealism.”

“Carley, you are getting a little beyond me,” declared Eleanor, dubiously.

“What are you going to do?  It all comes home to each individual woman.  Her attitude toward life.”

“I’ll drift along with the current, Carley, and be a good sport,” replied Eleanor, smiling.

“You don’t care about the women and children of the future?  You’ll not deny yourself now, and think and work, and suffer a little, in the interest of future humanity?”

“How you put things, Carley!” exclaimed Eleanor, wearily.  “Of course I care—­when you make me think of such things.  But what have I to do with the lives of people in the years to come?”

“Everything.  America for Americans!  While you dawdle, the life blood is being sucked out of our great nation.  It is a man’s job to fight; it is a woman’s to save. . . .  I think you’ve made your choice, though you don’t realize it.  I’m praying to God that I’ll rise to mine.”

Carley had a visitor one morning earlier than the usual or conventional time for calls.

“He wouldn’t give no name,” said the maid.  “He wears soldier clothes, ma’am, and he’s pale, and walks with a cane.”

“Tell him I’ll be right down,” replied Carley.

Her hands trembled while she hurriedly dressed.  Could this caller be Virgil Rust?  She hoped so, but she doubted.

As she entered the parlor a tall young man in worn khaki rose to meet her.  At first glance she could not name him, though she recognized the pale face and light-blue eyes, direct and steady.