Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

“ The mind of youth is incapable of grasping the fact that there are a thousand million steps on that unending stairway, each step steeper and harder to climb than the one before.”
“But that isn’t all,” said Shannon O’Keefe, thoughtfully sipping her tea and glancing sidewise at Agra Wyndham. “The boy—his name’s Paul Welles has some fool notion of being a playwright, instead of turning the wheels that mint Papa’s millions. He’s been taking the Baker course at Harvard, and is here to spill his plays all over Broadway. ”

“ Kate questioned teasingly.
Agra shriveled her with ineffable disdain.
“It’s a chestnutty plot,” she said coldly, “and you fail to consider the possibility of his falling in love with me. Men have been known to do so from time to time.”
“You can manage all that,” returned Shannon with easy confidence. “As for the radiance, at his age—twenty-three—he’ll prefer the sophistication of the lip-stick and eyebrow-pencil to any color that comes and goes.”
“I hate women,” said the Wyndham deeply. ”

“ It’s the habit of a lifetime for him to be in love with Bluet.”
Agra fairly seemed to draw regal if imaginary robes about her and cast down scorn from illimitable heights.
“A man lose his head! What is that to me? I, who have seen them abandon themselves to their grotesque agonies a thousand times, crawl about the floor after me and water my rugs with their tears!
“Shannon O’Keefe,”—her voice sank to the deep emotional tone which had caused shivers in the spines of her audiences for the last twenty years,—“it is a black, a damnable, thing you’ve done. ”

“ Miss Wyndham cast a small pillow passionately to the floor. “Never, never again! When I first knew you, Shannon O’Keefe, you had green satin wall-paper on your living-room, and red plush chairs. Now you've progressed to black and white, with touches of orange, but you’ve got a green satin wallpaper and red plush soul.”
Said Mrs. O’Keefe, unmoved:
“You're getting into a tantrum, and you know what it does to the lines about your mouth and eyes. No woman can afford either tears or temper after she’s—”
Agra gave a bound forward as rapid and graceful as that of a black panther. ”

“ I can’t get those other things that Baker harps on into my head—motivation and unities of time and place, and coördination, and—
“I want to go back to Centervale and go into the mills; but she’s got this craze about ‘people who do things,’ and I tried to please her. Oh, Miss Wyndham,”—he crumpled his handkerchief into a ball and mopped his eyes,—“I’ve loved Bluet all my life. I can’t give her up, and I don’t know what to do. What must I do?” ”

“ Then she sank back in her chair, her hand at her heart, drew a deep breath and went on.
“You are exactly like The Duchess in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ always tucking some poor flamingo under your arm and playing croquet with it, and I’m your present flamingo. I’m so easily imposed on, always ready to spend myself and be spent for my friends. ”

“ It takes something besides even beauty and brains and hard work to win the sort of success she’s got.
“‘Why, you insignificant piece of pink-and-white prettiness, you couldn’t get across a row of candles on the drawing-room floor ”