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"The men I like," she presently admitted, with candour, "don't seem to like me. The men who attract me. They go for the pretty, dolly woman."

"You're pretty," urged Patricia.

"They don't think so. What's left to me? People like Jack."

"But Amy.... It can't be so...." The word Patricia sought was "casual." "I mean, I thought one knew—that one either loved a man or didn't." She was pathetically bewildered.

"That's in days when a girl only knew the man she married, and one or two others. It's different now. You know a hundred men—who's to know which is the best of them?"

"Is that how the men feel?" asked Patricia.

Amy stirred in discomfort. She was ill at ease.

"My dear girl, you don't understand," she said. "There's physical attraction; and there's ... well, there's being pals with a man. But the old ideas of such things are gone."

Patricia shook her head. She was hearing of something she did not understand.

"I wish they weren't," was all she could find to say.

"They are!" fiercely cried Amy. "If I were a good girl, living at home, I should marry Jack and be told I'd made a 'suitable match.' But I'm not. I'm on my own. I'm going to have a life of my own. I'm going—I'm not going to be any man's property. That's finished."