She liked to be on the outside of things and watch. She loved to weave stories to herself about people, but to have to move among them and make conversation was terrible. She had purposely come late to avoid having to sit and talk a long while with someone while people were gathering.

But a group of merry girls was coming in behind her, and she hated to have them stare at her, so she hurried in and took off her coat and hat in the ladies’ parlor, which was already well decorated with hats and wraps.

The bevy of eager girls entered just as she turned to go out, shouting and laughing, pretty in bright-colored dresses, combing their bobbed locks, some of them even dabbing on lipstick, holding up their tiny hand mirrors and teasing one another loudly in a new kind of slang that Marion did not in the least understand. They were very young girls, of course, but some of the things they were saying were shocking. Could it be that girls, nice girls, girls who belonged to the church and Sunday school, talked like that nowadays?

She shrank away from them and went into the main room.

For a moment she was dazed before the clamor of tongues and the medley of pretty dresses. Someone was playing the piano, and everybody seemed trying to talk as loud as possible to be heard above it. She felt somehow a stranger and an alien.

She began to look about for someone she knew.

Off at the other side of the room was a group of young people, three of them old schoolmates of Marion’s. Mechanically she made her way toward them, half hoping they might welcome her to their midst. There was Isabel Cresson. She used to help Isabel with her algebra and geometry problems in school. She had never been especially intimate with her, but at least she was not a stranger.

But when she arrived at the corner where the young people had established themselves, she was not met with friendliness. Anna Reese and Betty Byson bowed to her, but Isabel Cresson only stared.

“Oh, why you’re Marion Warren, aren’t you?” she said with a condescending lift of her eyebrows. “How are you? It’s been ages since I’ve seen you. I thought you must have moved away.”

Marion tried to explain that her father had been ill and she had not been able to be out, but Isabel was not listening. She had merely swept Marion with a disconcerting glance, which made her suddenly aware that her dress was out of date and her shoes were shabby, and then turned her eyes back to the young men with whom she had been talking when Marion arrived.

Marion mechanically finished her sentence about her father’s recent death, feeling most uncomfortable and wishing she had not explained at all. Isabel turned her glance back toward her long enough to say, “Oh, too bad. I’m sorry, I’m sure,” and then got up and moved across to the other side of the circle to speak to one of the young men. She did not suggest introducing Marion to the young men. No one made any attempt to move or include her in their circle. Marion dropped down in a chair just behind them, too hurt and bewildered to get herself away from them immediately.

The girls and men chattered on for some minutes, ignoring her utterly. Once she heard Isabel say, with a light laugh in response to something one of the men had said, “Yes, one meets so many common people at a church affair, don’t you think? I’ve coaxed Uncle Rad to let us go to some more exclusive church, out in a suburb you know, or uptown, but he doesn’t see it. He was born and brought up in this church, and nothing will do but we’ve all got to come. I’ve quit, however. I simply can’t stand the affairs they have here constantly. I only came tonight because I was asked to sing. Say Ed, did you hear that Jefferson Lyman is home? That’s another reason I came. They say he is coming here tonight just for old times’ sake. I don’t much believe it, but I took the chance.”

“And who is Jefferson Lyman?” asked the young man, who was evidently a newcomer in town.

“Oh, mercy, don’t you know Jeff? Why, he’s an old sweetheart of mine. We used to be crazy about each other when we were kids. Walked back and forth to school together and all that.