“ My only advantage over other women lies in the prudence which caused me to get a husband before I set out to make the discoveries you allude to."
"Don't let us talk about marriage as it exists today," said Cornelia, parrying the blow as best she could. "Marriage is so banal."
"Yes, and so convenient," drawled Lydia, who reluctantly supported her husband in idleness and luxury. "Also, so expensive. Husbands now come dearer than ever before in the history of family life, while lovers never were cheaper."
"Lydia is joking," said Janet, sending her clear, mollifying voice into the breach. ”

“ They show their expectations by word and deed, by sign and innuendo. They show it constantly, mercilessly, in a hundred small and super-subtle ways. I tell you, Janet, concerted expectation is the strongest form of pressure that can be brought to bear upon a man. It can bring about miracles. It can move mountains. Only a hero or a coward can resist it."
"I suppose it's like the pressure of public opinion or of one's family," she said, her soft clarinet tones pouring balm on his feelings. "I know what family pressure means. I am so sorry for you, Claude, sorry from my heart." ”

“ Do you know the most delightful thing about you, Robert?"
"Modesty forbids me to say—but not to hear. Tell me."
"It is the fact that you can behave towards a woman friend as frankly and decently and unsentimentally as you would towards a man friend. You can't imagine what a relief it is to a girl to know one man who'll always treat her man-to-man fashion."
"Will I? Janet, if you were perfectly sure of my future conduct you'd find me an insufferable bore. Besides, no fascinating woman ever wanted to be treated like a man—at least not for long at a time. You won't be the first exception." ”

“ After a while, he began again, with impetuous candor:
"Janet, don't go into this adventure with your eyes shut. Remember, you can't give yourself up to an experiment in free love without giving up everything else. That is the strongest argument against the step. All your gifts, all your energy, all your purpose will be consumed in explaining, defending, evading. Your whole life will be one long course of swallowing the consequences and warding off criticism. Do you wish to be a life-long martyr to free love, like Cornelia?" ”

“ Two bands, an Hawaiian Jazz and the Kips Bay Roughnecks, furnished the music, and what with the crash and blare of instruments, the dazzle of costumes, the clouds of confetti, and the swirl of dancers, masked and unmasked, the dense motley crowd appeared to be squeezing the last ounce of pleasure out of its mad adventure in search of "a good time."
Janet's appearance in her Spanish robes with the genuine Castilian mantilla, the high tortoise shell comb, and the silk Andalusian shawl flaming brilliantly against her dark hair, was one of the sensations of the evening. ”

“ Janet was the only person who had ever succeeded in weakening Cornelia's illusion about herself by bringing it into occasional juxtaposition with reality.
"You'll greatly oblige me, Janet, by not ordering my servants about under my very nose."
"Your manikins are not your servants, Cornelia. They're your employees. You slave-drive them outrageously. If you don't look out, you'll have a strike on your hands before long."
"With you as the strike leader, I dare say?"
"Why not? Your inability to respect other people's time is simply appalling. ”

“ Jerome, blissfully unaware of the existence of Robert Lloyd as a factor in this hesitation, took it in very good part. Janet should make up her mind when she pleased. But surely, she wasn't again playing with the thought of marrying M. St. Hilaire? After her emphatic assertion that she didn't love him!
"Yet I don't dislike him, by any means," said Janet. "I was very fond of him in Brussels, before he lost his head."
"Fond! Child, one may marry for money without affection, or for affection without money, but one shouldn't marry for either money or affection without a little romance thrown in." ”

“ Grey could hardly be expected to share her view that talent and superb execution had never by themselves attracted the plaudits of the crowd, or that the only man who could please the million was the man born with the taste of the million. Mr. Grey had been lucky enough to inherit this taste. Why demand that he look a gift horse in the mouth?
But the judgment of youth is direct and pitiless! It seemed nothing less than ridiculous to Janet that Mr. Grey should seriously pose as a fount of the divine fire, and calmly invite her to become a ministering angel to the sacred fount. ”

“ This confession, Janet heard, was the prelude to many hours of bitter torment. Cornelia said that the one good outcome of this evil period was that she began to think of the realities of life for the first time. She was led to question the moral conventions which she had always taken for granted and which, she now saw, encrusted the conduct of most of the people around her. Under the tutelage of Percival Houghton, who proclaimed himself a free thinker, as well as a free lover, she became alive to the absurdity of regarding the conventions of an age as immutable laws for all time. ”

“ Claude and I would make a very poor team. I have in mind, not his fits of bad temper, which are very annoying, nor his attacks of jealousy, which are monstrous. I have in mind his outlook on affairs and his active interests, which are in every respect different from mine. Claude is in love with the pomps and trappings of life; and I am not. He goes in passionately for elegance, luxury, all the externals which men admire in society or public institutions; and I do not. He wishes to study and master the ritual of social intercourse in all its forms (even in its Kips Bay form) ”

“ On reaching her own street, Janet had to plough her way to the Lorillard tenements through shoals of children that scampered about as derelict as herself. She felt the keenest pity for these little tots who came from the very immodel tenements not far away, where five or even eight people existed in a single room, defying the decencies of life by day and mocking them by night in order to live up to "the highest standard of living" in the world. ”

“ This, Percival Houghton did. Thank your kind stars, my dear, that Claude is not as Percival, that he has not the latter's dominating will or piratical psychic personality. Your soul can still be called your own.
How I pray that your trials may turn out for the best! Araminta, every woman is fated to learn at the hands of some man how unscrupulous all men are in matters of sex. But is it not strange that men should outflag us at what is called our own game, and that women should let themselves be deceived by the fact that they are always credited with the victory? ”

“ Janet was thrilled with the excitement, the infectious spirits and the easy camaraderie. She noticed that there was no chaperonage or standing on ceremony whatever, and she was struck with the entire absence of self-consciousness between the sexes. Young men and women went in and out as they pleased, helped themselves to Cornelia's ice box and piano as fancy dictated, and bantered, flirted, kissed, or exchanged partners without stint or scruple. ”

“ Janet dismissed this explanation lightly and begged Robert not to analyze every joy until its very essence had been probed—and destroyed. She laughed at his attempt to convince her that these gay evenings of Cornelia's were a kind of renaissance. His theory was that the light of Cornelia's splendor had been getting dim of late, as it had got dim on several previous occasions. But the impact of a new partner against her, like the impact of an astral visitor against a dying sun, now as always gave her a new lease of brilliance. ”

“ Why should an archangelic or any other sort of gentleman shortsightedly insist that a talented bride on her way to becoming an excellent banker, merchant, or politician, should transform herself into a mediocre woman-of-all-work? Why should he consider his own bargain bettered by such a questionable transformation?
"On the other hand, Janet," he added boldly, "why should an up-to-date young lady jump from the devil of housekeeping into the deep sea of free love, as I fear you will end by doing if you follow Cornelia's suggestions?" ”

“ But the marvel of marvels was that, throughout this period of unbought, unsought advertising, nobody breathed the suspicion that Miss J. Barr, the calm, collected young manageress in the neat blouse and trim skirt, might be the notorious Janet Barr who had eloped two years before with Claude Fontaine!
Then, one fine day, as she was leaving the Broadway side of Wanamaker's, a man had leapt out of a magnificent limousine drawn up at the curb, and had seized her hands.
It was Claude himself! Handsome and imposing as ever, with perhaps a dash less of self-confidence. ”

“ Beside the deathlike stagnation of the Barrs of Brooklyn, the movement, intensity and go of the Outlaws had what she cheerfully accepted as the quality and flavor of reality. "This is life," a still, small voice cried within her, meaning that this was at least a fairly good imitation of life on its gayer side. And she revelled unblushingly in the enchantment that her ignorance of pleasure and her natural high spirits had cast around Kips Bay, the model tenements, Cornelia, Robert and Claude. ”

“ I love you for being so unlike Marjorie. She has her good points; but fellow feeling is not one of them. You see, her social ambition and the ease with which she can gratify her every wish have quite dried up the tender places in her heart. She has no pity left in her nature. And pity is always the essential thing in a woman's soul."
They sat down on a grassy slope in a secluded corner of the park. In a lyrical mood, Claude pointed to the sun just then flaring out and splashing a thousand colors on the livid sky.
"Look, Janet," he said, "how the whole earth thrills to its warm radiance! ”

“ I've never been to an Academy exhibition, Claude."
"How amazing! Not even to one?"
"Not even to one. Imagine how hopelessly ignorant I am of art!"
"Art! People don't go to the Academy in quest of art, you dear innocent. It would be a waste of effort. They go as a compliment to their friends whose portraits have been painted, not as a tribute to the men who painted them."
But Janet was not to be deflected from her purpose. ”

“ My dear, one marries a man because he calls to what is deepest and truest in one. Because he responds to—"
"The mating instinct?"
"How can you sit there and say such vulgar things?"
"Vulgar! Well, you are going it! Isn't the mating instinct as deep and true as any of them?"
"It isn't a reason for marriage," said Cornelia, in staccato accents. "And you know perfectly well I never said or thought it was. Quite the reverse. I opposed marriage because the sex instinct, which is what induces most people to marry, is a good ground for a temporary union but not a good ground for a permanent one." ”

“ And totally devoid of the instinct that induces most women to exploit the amorous moment. Claude could not get over it. Any other girl would have made the most of his present mood, the mood in which he was ready to think the world well lost for love. When the blood is hot, the tongue is prodigal of vows. Claude, at all events, was willing to promise anything, especially as he was still in pursuit, and as his promises were not to mature until he was in possession.
Yet Janet asked absolutely nothing! This surrender, as open-handed as it was confiding, moved him to compunction. ”

“ But, Araminta, all men are cowards, moral cowards, I mean. They face bullets sublimely, but they shiver and shake before an argument. They gayly lose their lives for a hunting trophy or a football triumph, but they can't bear to lose their dinners for a belief."
Janet, thinking of her father, was inclined to agree with this view.
"Is that why men let women keep up the marriage system?"
"My dear, it isn't the women who keep up the marriage system. It's the men! Women just fall into a system that's ready made for them. Most women are all body and no soul. ”

“ As long as he's around, Janet will never marry Monsieur St. Hilaire."
"She's just crazy enough to throw away the chance of a lifetime," said Mazie, judging it expedient to chime in with Cornelia.
"I don't believe she'll marry St. Hilaire, anyway," said Kelly, with the obstinacy of a mild nature. "She doesn't love him, to begin with. And she isn't the sort that'll do a thing simply because other people say that it's good for her. She's the sort of girl that shapes her own future."
"You're as big a fool as Pryor," said Cornelia, flinging tempestuously out of the gymnasium. ”