This reference to unchosen tribes, with its evocation of humorous contempt, now snapped a connection between these three people, and suddenly one saw them in a new way. The old man was smiling thinly, with a cynical intelligence, and the two women were shaken utterly by a paroxysm of understanding mirth. One saw now that they really were together, able, ancient, immensely knowing, and outside the world, regardant, tribal, communitied in derision and contempt for the unhallowed, unsuspecting tribes of lesser men who were not party to their knowing, who were not folded to their seal. It passed—the instant showing of their ancient sign. The women just smiled now, quietly: they were citizens of the world again.
“But Jake! You poor fellow!” Mrs. Jack said sympathetically. “You must have hated it!” Then she cried suddenly and enthusiastically as she remembered: “Isn’t Carlsbad just too beautiful?...Did you know that Bert and I were there one time?” As she uttered these words she slipped her hand affectionately through the arm of her friend, Roberta, then went on vigorously, with a jolly laugh and a merry face: “Didn’t I ever tell you about that time, Jake?...Really, it was the most wonderful experience!...But God!” she laughed almost explosively—“Will you ever forget the first three or four days, Bert?” She appealed to her smiling friend. “Do you remember how hungry we got? How we thought we couldn’t possibly hold out? Wasn’t it dreadful?” she said, and then went on with a serious and rather puzzled air as she tried to explain it: “But then—I don’t know—it’s funny—but somehow you get used to it, don’t you, Bert? The first few days are pretty awful, but after that you don’t seem to mind. I guess you get too weak, or something…I know Bert and I stayed in bed three weeks—and really it wasn’t bad after the first few days.” She laughed suddenly, richly. “We used to try to torture each other by making up enormous menus of the most delicious food we knew. We had it all planned out to go to a swell restaurant the moment our cure was over and order the biggest meal we could think of!...Well!” she laughed—“would you believe it?—the day the cure was finished and the doctor told us it would be all right for us to get up and eat—I know we both lay there for hours thinking of all the things we were going to have. It was simply wonderful!” she said, laughing and making a fine little movement with her finger and her thumb to indicate great delicacy, her voice squeaking like a child’s and her eyes wrinkling up to dancing points. “In all your life you never heard of such delicious food as Bert and I were going to devour! We resolved to do everything in the greatest style!...Well, at last we got up and dressed. And God!” she cried. “We were so weak we could hardly stand up, but we wore the prettiest clothes we had, and we had chartered a Rolls Royce for the occasion and a chauffeur in livery! In all your days,” she cried with her eyes twinkling, “you’ve never seen such swank! We got into the car and were driven away like a couple of queens. We told the man to drive us to the swellest, most expensive restaurant he knew. He took us to a beautiful place outside of town. It looked like a chateau!” She beamed rosily round her. “And when they saw us coming they must have thought we were royalty from the way they acted. The flunkies were lined up, bowing and scraping, for half a block. Oh, it was thrilling! Everything we’d gone through and endured in taking the cure seemed worth it…Well!” she looked round her and the breath left her body audibly in a sigh of complete frustration—“would you believe it?—when we got in there and tried to eat we could hardly swallow a bite! We had looked forward to it so long—we had planned it all so carefully—and all we could eat was a soft-boiled egg—and we couldn’t even finish that! It filled us up right to here—” she put a small hand level with her chin. “It was so tragic that we almost wept!...Isn’t it a strange thing? I guess it must be that your stomach shrinks up while you’re on the diet. You lie there day after day and think of the enormous meal you are going to devour just as soon as you get up—and then when you try it you’re not even able to finish a soft-boiled egg!”
As she finished, Mrs. Jack shrugged her shoulders and lifted her hands questioningly, with such a comical look on her face that everybody round her laughed. Even weary and jaded old Jake Abramson, who had really paid no attention to what she was saying but had just been regarding her with his fixed smile during the whole course of her animated dialogue, now smiled a little more warmly as he turned away to speak to other friends.
Miss Heilprinn and Mrs. Jack, left standing together in the centre of the big room, offered an instructive comparison in the capacities of their sex. Each woman was perfectly cast in her own role. Each had found the perfect adaptive means by which she could utilise her full talents with the least waste and friction.