The Precipice, page 109 by Elia W. Peattie
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was obliged to deny herself. They would have taken time from her too-busy hours; and she had not the strength to do her work according to her conscience, and then to drag herself halfway across town, merely for the amiability of making her bow and eating an ice in a charming house. Not but that she enjoyed the atmosphere of luxury--the elusive sense of opulence given her by the flowers, the distant music, the smiling, luxurious, complimentary women, the contrast between the glow within and the chill of twilight without--twilight sparkling with the lights of the waiting motors, and the glittering procession on the Drive. But, after all, while others rode, she walked, and sometimes she was very weary. To be sure, she was too gallant, too much at ease in her entertaining world, too expectant of the future, to fret even for a moment about the fact that she was walking while others rode. She hardly gave it a thought. But her disadvantages made her unable to cope with other women socially. She was, as she often said, fond of playing a game; but the social game pushed the point of achievement a trifle too far.
Moreover, there was the mere bother of "dressing the part." Her handsome heavy shoes, her strong, fashionable street gloves, her well-cared-for street frock, and becoming, practical hat she could obtain and maintain in freshness. She was "well-groomed" and made a sort of point of looking competent, as if she felt mistress of herself and her circumstances; she could even make herself dainty for a little dinner, but the silks and furs, the prodigality of yard-long gloves, the fetching boots and whimsical jewels of the ladies who made a fine art of feminine entertainments, were quite beyond her. So, sensibly, she counted it all out.
That Ray was at home in such surroundings, and that, had she been willing to give him the welcome he expected, she might have had a welcome at these as yet unopened doors through which he passed with conscious suavity, sometimes occurred to her. She was but human--and b