"Opportunities should be made," replied Carley.
"There are a million sides to this question of the modern young
woman--the fin-de-siecle girl. I'm for her!"
"How about the extreme of style in dress for this
remarkably-to-be-pitied American girl you champion so eloquently?"
queried Carley, sarcastically.
"Immoral!" exclaimed Eleanor with frank disgust.
"You admit it?"
"To my shame, I do."
"Why do women wear extreme clothes? Why do you and I wear open-work silk
stockings, skirts to our knees, gowns without sleeves or bodices?"
"We're slaves to fashion," replied Eleanor, "That's the popular excuse."
"Bah!" exclaimed Carley.
Eleanor laughed in spite of being half nettled. "Are you going to stop
wearing what all the other women wear--and be looked at askance? Are you
going to be dowdy and frumpy and old-fashioned?"
"No. But I'll never wear anything again that can be called immoral.
I want to be able to say why I wear a dress. You haven't answered my
question yet. Why do you wear what you frankly admit is disgusting?"
"I don't know, Carley," replied Eleanor, helplessly. "How you harp on
things! We must dress to make other women jealous and to attract men. To
be a sensation! Perhaps the word 'immoral' is not what I mean. A woman
will be shocking in her obsession to attract, but hardly more than that,
if she knows it."
"Ah! So few women realize how they actually do look. Haze Ruff could
tell them."
"Haze Ruff. Who in the world is he or she?" asked Eleanor.
"Haze Ruff is a he, all right," replied Carley, grimly.
"Well, who is he?"
"A sheep-dipper in Arizona," answered Carley, dreamily.
"Humph! And what can Mr. Ruff tell us?"
"He told me I looked like one of the devil's angels--and that I dressed
to knock the daylights out of men."
"Well, Carley Burch, if that isn't rich!" exclaimed Eleanor, with a peal
of laughter. "I dare say you appreciate that as an original compliment."
"No.... I wonder what Ruff would say about jazz--I just wonder,"
murmured Carley.
"Well, I wouldn't care what he said, and I don't care what you say,"
returned Eleanor. "The preachers and reformers and bishops and rabbis
make me sick. They rave about jazz. Jazz--the discordant note of our
decadence! Jazz--the harmonious expression of our musicless, mindless,
soulless materialism!--The idiots! If they could be women for a while
they would realize the error of their ways. But they will never, never
abolish jazz--never, for it is the grandest, the most wonderful, the
most absolutely necessary thing for women in this terrible age of
smotheration."