"What is it?"

"Simply that this season is my last. Wait!" She held up one hand to check her friend's exclamation. "And," she added, "that I shall leave town at least by the first of July, if not sooner."

Chloe's face fell for a moment. But then she recovered from the shock.

"The first of July. Oh, by that time I shall know everybody, and——"

"Be as weary of everybody as I am."

"Be able to manage for myself. Besides, you darling, society won't let you leave it."

At these words Mrs. Verulam's face became almost as deplorable in expression as that of an undertaker who is obliged by cruel circumstance to attend to business on a Bank Holiday.

"That is what I fear," she said. "That is the terror which pursues me night and day. But it must, Chloe—it shall! And yet nobody knows—except those who have tried it—how terribly, how appallingly difficult it is to get out of society. To get into it is nothing. There are a thousand ways of doing that. Be a German Jew or a brewer, and you are there. I knew a man who got into it by merely going out to South Africa and coming back at once in the disguise of a millionaire. And he only[Pg 23] spent a couple of hours at Cape Town. But once you are in society and popular, the cage-door is shut. And then what can the squirrel do?"

[Pg 23]

Tears flooded her dark grey eyes. Chloe pressed her friend's hand with forced sympathy for a misfortune which she found it difficult to understand. Mrs. Verulam cleared her throat and continued:

"I have made many attempts, but each one seems to give me a more secure footing in the great world. Once I lost all my money."

"What?"

"Gave out that I had, you know."

"And what happened?"

"Oh, it was so dreadful. My acquaintances rallied round me. Have you ever been rallied round?"

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