Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/223

 candidacy for the matrimonial condition. They had passed out of the preparatory period, and she hadn't; so that her relation to them was a little like that of a student, still in school, to former classmates who, after a thrilling Commencement, have become graduates gloriously preoccupied with their new world. Companion initiates in an experience superior to hers, they seemed to have fulfilled their destiny, and to be at last properly and completely alive; while she, avoided by this common, happy destiny, was left outside, not yet really alive and never to be, indeed, if that destiny should still avoid her or she reject it. The latter alternative was the kinder, and already she knew that some of these friends were beginning to say of her: "It isn't for lack of asking."

She was still with them but no longer of them, though they were obviously as fond of her as ever. They were always pleased to have their husbands dance with her; and she foresaw that as the years went by they would find an "odd man" for her whenever they could. At present she was still almost too amply able to supply the "odd man," herself; and here she felt another difference between her condition and that of the graduates: it seemed to her that in spite of their superior advantages she understood