“Did I say ’hard as nails’?” said Kitty, grotesquely fitting a cigarette in the aperture of her mouth.  “I apologize.  Why, alongside of you a piece of flint is morning cereal.  Haven’t you ever had a love affair?  I’ve been married twice—­that’s how chicken hearted I can be.  Haven’t you ever pumped a little faster just because a certain some one walked into the room?”

“Once.”

“Once what?”

“I liked a fellow.  Pretty much.  A blond.  Say, he was blond!  I always think to myself, Kit, next to Gerald, you’ve got the bluest eyes under heaven.  Only, his didn’t have any dregs.”

“Thanks, dearie.”

“I sometimes wonder about Gerald.  I ought to drive over while we’re out here.  Poor old Gerald Fishback!”

“Sweet name—­’Fishback.’  No wonder you went wrong, dearie.”

“Oh, I’m not getting soft.  I saw my bed and made it, nice and soft and comfy, and I’m lying on it without a whimper.”

“You just bet your life you made it up nice and comfy!  You’ve the right idea; I have to hand that to you.  You command respect from them.  Lord!  Ed would as soon fire a teacup at me as not.  But, with me, it pays.  The last one he broke he made up to me with my opal-and-diamond beetle.”

“Wouldn’t wear an opal if it was set next to the Hope diamond.”

“Superstitious, dearie?”

“Unlucky.  Never knew it to fail.”

“Not a superstition in my bones.  I don’t believe in walking under ladders or opening an umbrella in the house or sitting down with thirteen, but, Lordy! never saw the like with you!  Thought you’d have the hysterics over that little old vanity mirror you broke that day out at the races.”

“Br-r-r!  I hated it.”

“Lay easy, dearie.  Nothing can touch you the way he’s raking in the war contracts.”

“Great—­isn’t it?”

“Play for a country home, dearie.  I always say real estate and jewelry are something in the hand.  Look ahead in this game, I always say.”

“You just bet I’ve looked ahead.”

“So have I, but not enough.”

“Somehow, I never feel afraid.  I could get a job to-morrow if I had to.”

“Say, dearie, if it comes to that, with twenty pounds off me, there’s not a chorus I couldn’t land back in.”

“I worked once, you know, in Lichtig’s import shop.”

“Fifth Avenue?”

“Yes.  It was in between the salesman and Al.  I sold two thousand five hundred dollars’ worth of gowns the first week.”

“Sure enough?”

“‘Girl,’ old man Lichtig said to me the day I quit—­’girl,’ he said, ’if ever you need this job again, comeback; it’s waiting.’”

“Fine chance!”

“I’ve got the last twenty-five dollars I earned pinned away this minute in the pocket of the little dark-blue suit I wore to work.  I paid for that suit with my first month’s savings.  A little dark-blue Norfolk, Lichtig let me have out of stock for twenty-seven fifty.”