Before Midnight

"It smells bad. It's been used for thirty centuries. Musk. In the Garden of Eden, when Eve's face was dirty what did she do? She washed it with good clean water. What do women do today? They rub it in with grease! Look at their lips and fingernails and toes and eyelashes--and other places. The Women's Nature League is the champion and the friend of the natural woman, and the natural woman was Eve, Eve the way God made her. The only true beauty is natural beauty, and I know, because I was denied that wondrous gift. I am not merely unlovely, I am ugly. The well-favored ones have no right to pollute the beauty of nature. I know!"

Her back had bowed a little, and she straightened it. "That knowledge came to me early, and it has been my staff and my banner all my life. I have always had to work for my bread, but I saved some money, and ten years ago I used some of it to start the League. We have many members, over three thousand, but the dues are small and we are severely limited. Last fall, last September, when I saw the advertisement of the contest, I thought again what I had thought many times before, that it was hopeless because there was too much money against us, millions and millions, and then, sitting there looking at the advertisement, the idea came to me. Why not use their money for us? I considered it and approved of it. A majority of our members live in or near Los Angeles, and most of them are cultured and educated women. I phoned to some and asked them to phone others, and all of them were enthusiastic about it and wanted to help. I organized it, and you don't have to be beautiful to know how to organize. Within two weeks there were over three hundred of us working at it. We had no serious trouble with any of the original twenty, the twenty that were published--except Number Eighteen, and we finally got that. With the second group, to break the tie, with those we had to get five in less than a week, which was unfair because the verses were all mailed at the same time in New York and it took longer for them to get to me, and they were harder, much harder, but we got them, and I mailed them ten hours before the deadline. We're going to get these too." She tapped her bag, in her lap. "No question about it. No question at all. We're going to' get it, no matter how hard they are. Half a million dollars. For the League."

Wolfe was regarding her, trying not to frown and nearly succeeding. "Not necessarily half a million, madam. You have four competitors."