herself together, and while Eric ordered dinner she busied herself repairing her haggard mask. No matter how badly Connie was looking, people always observed that she was a woman who had once been very beautiful. She joined him at the table in a few minutes, looking as though tears were as foreign to her nature as to a statue's.
It is characteristic of Connie's sort that they forget they have made a scene two minutes after it is over, and imagine that others forget as easily. She glanced about the crowded room as she sat down, hoping that she might be seen in the company of such a man. She was proud of him, and, to do her justice, proud of the fact that they were brother and sister, forgetting that in twenty years a resemblance that had once been remarkable had nearly vanished.
Before dinner was over, she had given him an outline of her life down to the present with commendable honesty. She had no wish, apparently, to gild the ugly sordidness of some of it, though she made it appear that her misfortunes had come to her more through the faithlessness and selfishness of men than through her own weakness. And yet men, it was obvious, were still her chief interest in life. As she talked to Eric her
