At twenty they know all there is to be known, they are
blasees--cynical--ready for divorce before they are ready for
marriage. By contrast you are so wholesome, so refreshing."
"Thank you," Maggie again murmured.
And as the two women sat there, sprung from the extremes of life, but
for the moment on the level of equals, and as the older talked on,
there grew up in Maggie two violently contradictory emotions. One was
triumph. She had won out here, just as she had said she would win out;
and won out with what Barney had declared to be the most difficult
person to get the better of, a finished woman of the world. Indeed,
that was triumph!
The other emotion she did not understand so well. And just then she
could not analyze it. It was an unexpected dismay--a vague but
permeating sickness--a dazed sense that she was being carried by
unfamiliar forces toward she knew not what.
She held fast to her sense of triumph. That was the more apprehendable
and positive; triumph was what she had set forth to win. This sense of
triumph was at its highest, and she was resting in its elating
security, when a car stopped before the house and a large man got out
and started up the steps. From the first moment there was something
familiar to Maggie in his carriage, but not till Miss Sherwood, who
had risen and crossed toward him, greeted him as "Mr.
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