Page:The Hard-Boiled Virgin (1926).djvu/15



THE HARD-BOILED VIRGIN

her father and mother would not have accounted for her in just that way, Katharine Faraday was the sixth pledge of their love. They had not much curiosity concerning the stars or the arts, and they would have been as unlikely to say that she was born under the sign of Virgo and in the earlier Beardsley period. But when she was eight years old, the spirit of that age was still unknown in cities far more worldly wise than Atlanta. The prestige of double beds and double standards was not seriously diminished, and society still called upon husbands to be as faithful as nature requires to tangent wives neatly buttoned into white cambric which flowed to their ankles, and upon wives to be as faithful as nature required to tangent husbands buttoned into white cambric which flowed only to their knees. Katharine Faraday’s mother had no reason for suspecting that 9