“My dear Mabel,” Myrtle replied, “there’s just a possibility of a man who frequents corner saloons doesn’t drink, but it’s rather slight, I fear; and anyhow, whether he drinks or not, the fact that he enjoys the company and atmosphere of corner saloons is sufficient to bar him from certain drawing rooms. Dear me, Mabel, haven’t we all endured Stella Dallas years enough in this town to satisfy you? I, for one, don’t enjoy torturing animals even though some of them don’t seem to mind it very much. That woman is in for a lot of disappointments when that child of hers she’s always using to boost herself into some sort of prominence is older. The time has come, for her sake, as well as ours, to put an end to all further suffering.”

“The child seems quite a nice little thing.”

“But how long will she stay quite a nice little thing with a mother like that? Really, Mabel!”

“And nice little thing or not,” spoke up somebody from the other side of the hearth, “I’m sure I don’t want my son meeting her at dances, and things, as he grows up, and run the risk of having him fall in love with a girl with such a mother!”

“Oh, isn’t it sad?” deplored Phyllis Stearns, with a sanctimonious sigh, “that women exist who care so little for their children as Stella Dallas? I used to know her very slightly, when she was first married, and before her child was ever born she didn’t want her. And now she goes off with a man like that! Oh!”

“Such a woman doesn’t deserve to have a child,” exclaimed Mrs. Kay Bird, who had successfully avoided ever having one herself.

4

STELLA WAS SAFELY in the haven of her two-rooms-and-a-bath at the King Arthur when she opened her mail. She had just come up from luncheon in the dining-room below, where she had greeted everybody she knew with her usual cordiality. “Be it even an apartment hotel, there’s no place like home!” she had laughed to Mrs. Kay Bird. “Gracious, but this place seems good to me!” she had thrown across to the young doctor who ate at the table next to hers; and to the two white-haired old ladies who occasionally asked her of an evening to make a fourth at auction, “All ready for a game, any time,” she had exclaimed.

She was still purring as she moved about the three rooms which were hers and Laurel’s alone, humming in a low tone to herself, delighting in their luxury and their comfort, as she laid away her hat and veil and gloves, bag and umbrella, in their old familiar nooks and corners.