"Electra," said she, "you'll be horribly shocked and you'll want to laugh at me. But don't you do it. Don't you do either of those two things."
Electra's brows came together in a perplexity that yet betokened only a tepid interest. Her own affairs were too insistent. They crowded out the pale, dim hopes of age.
"When, grandmother?" she asked. "Why should I want to laugh?"
"Never mind. But you will. And when you do, you say to yourself that, after all, youth and age are just about the same, only age has tested many things and found they're no good. So if it finds something that seems good--well, Electra, you're off on your fool's errand. Don't you deny other folks the comfort of theirs."
"No, of course you don't. But you will. Once I shouldn't have cared whether you did or not, but I've taken a kind of a liking to you. I told you I should when you turned human and made a fool of yourself like the rest of us. And now you're going out into the wilderness, to found a city or something of that sort."
"I am going to help the Brotherhood," said Electra, with punctilious truth.
"And build a monument to that handsome scamp that had the bad taste to come over here to die."
"Grandmother, you must not use such words."
"Must not? Don't you suppose I know a scamp when I see one? If I'd been fifty years younger, I dare say I should be starting out to build him a monument, too. But I'm glad of it, child, I'm glad of it. He's your preserver. He has roused in you the capacity for being a fool. Make much of it. Prize it. It's God's most blessed gift to man. When you've lost that, you've lost everything."
"There is the carriage, grandmother. I must go."
"Good-by, my dear," she said. "I'm sorry I've harried you. I had to, though. I should again. Now we'll meet in Paris, or London--or another world."
Electra, a perfect picture of the well-equipped traveler, in her beautiful suit, her erect pose, was at the door.
"The maids will go in an hour," she said. "Then you've only to turn the key and walk over to Mrs. Grant's. I wish you'd had your trunks taken out before."
"My trunks can wait," chuckled the old lady. "They'll be sent for."
As Electra's carriage turned from the driveway into the road, Madam Fulton laughed again.