Wilhelmina’s sensibility was that of an only child who for twenty-four years has been adored, tended, and nagged by her parents. As Mrs. Gold helped her pretty daughter to dress, she made remarks which shifted between ruthless criticism and infatuated admiration. She observed once again that her daughter had the legs of a Ziegfield Follies girl and a face as refined as those she studied on the Sunday society pages. But, given such native gifts, why, at the age of twenty-four, a late age for an unmarried girl, did she have to go out only with this strange author in unpressed pants? Mrs Gold was unable to penetrate this unpleasant act. Her disappointment with her husband, who was not rich and hence to her mind a failure, united with her hope and her disappointment in her daughter, and all these feelings, which had their beginning in the first week of her marriage, arose to the point of compulsion. She made remarks which she knew would enrage her daughter because they had enraged her many times before.

“Why,” she asked her daughter as she helped her to adjust her dress, “did you discourage Herman like that? After all, he wanted to marry you so much.”