Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/277

 red flannel about her neck, enjoyed the lazy luxury of a morning in bed. But when the sun was high enough to fall across the footboard and half of the ruffled muslin counterpane, Pauline, skimpily dressed in rusty black, made her appearance.

'Oh—why, Pauline, I thought you were in church.'

'No—I think I have a touch of your cold.' She looked suspiciously at the luxurious young lady in bed.

'It's hardly a very bad cold, Pauline,' Lanice assured her guiltily; 'I shall be up for dinner.'

'What are you going to do this afternoon?'

'Why, nothing I know of—write letters—perhaps.'

'And to-morrow—and the day after—Lanice, what are you going to do with your life?'

'Oh, I'm going to live it...' Lanice's voice rose either from irritation or from the pleasant prospect of living a life.

'You are now twenty-six. If you live to be seventy, it will be all over before long—then what?'

'Then I shall be dead. But I do hope there will be others who will enjoy the same things that I have enjoyed—like the red salamanders in the woods and mice whiskers—and people, and—'

'Men—'added Pauline rudely.

Lanice put her slender arms over her head and laced her long fingers back of her neck. She answered this gibe seriously.

'And men—I don't know why it is that I really love men—and trust them...They have never