Chapter X - Page 2

one herself once? She has a pretty hard time even now making life interesting for herself--out here, anyhow.

"Yesterday we motored down to Menlo and dropped in at the Maynards. There were a lot of the props of San Francisco society, all as rich as croesus, sitting on the veranda crocheting socks or sacks for a crop of new babies that are due. One or two were hemstitching lawn, or embroidering a monogram, or something else equally useless or virtuous. They were talking mild gossip, and didn't even have powder on. It was ghastly--"

"Helene," said Ruyler abruptly, "what do you think is the secret of happiness--I mean, of course, the enduring sort--perhaps content would be the better word. Happiness is too dependent upon love, and love was never meant for daily food. You are not by nature frivolous, and you are capable of thought. Have you ever given any to the secret of content?"

"Yes, work," she answered promptly. "Everybody should have his daily job, prescribed either by the state or by necessity; but something he must do if both he and society would continue to exist."

Ruyler elevated his eyebrows and looked at her curiously. "Socialism. I didn't know you had ever heard of it."

"Aileen and I are not such fools as we look--as you were good enough to intimate just now. We went to a series of lectures early last winter over at the University, on Socialism--a lot of us formed a class, but all except Aileen and I dropped out.

"We continued to read for a time after the lectures were over, but of course that didn't last. One drops everything for want of stimulus, and when one begins to flutter again one is lost.

"But I heard and read and thought enough to deduce that the only vital interest in life after one's secret happiness--which one would not dare spread out too thin if one could in this American life--is necessary work well done. And that is quite different from those fussy interests and fads we create or take up for the sake of thinking we are busy and interested.

"Polly's mother once told me she never was so happy in her life as during those weeks after the earthquake and fire when all the servants had run away and she had to cook for the family out in the street on a stove they bought down in a little shop in Polk Street and set up and surrounded on three sides by 'inside blinds.' She happened to have a talent for cooking, and without her the family would have starved. Polly tied a towel round her head and did the housework, or stood in a line and got the daily rations from the Government. She never thought once of--"

"Of what?"

"Oh, of doing anything rather than expire of boredom. She and Rex had been married a year and were living at home. Rex and Mr. Carter helped excavate down in the business district, as the working class wouldn't