When a woman reaches thirty she draws a long breath and wonders not so much at what lies ahead as at what amazing combinations of circumstances brought her to the place where she is forced to say, between astonishment and reluctance, “Today, I am thirty!”

For reaching thirty has been a lively process, a procession of steps set to so swift a tempo that it is hard to look back and isolate them, in remembrance. One was a child, happy or miserable, as the case might be, one became a little girl, wearing hair ribbons, if fashionable, puzzling over schoolbooks, making the ardent, arm-linked friendships of little girlhood, regarding with obvious scorn, and secret admiration, tolerance and exasperation the antics of creatures classified as boys. Then one was an adolescent, terribly perturbed, given to fantasies and ardors, tears and tribulations. And finally one became a woman. But when, exactly?

Women with houses to run, men to feed and cajole, children to bathe and dress, budgets to ponder over, haven’t, one would say, much time to give to the thirtyish feeling. Yet there is always a moment, approaching or reaching that particular birthday, which catches at the heart and mind with a sense of unreality. Thirty is so very young … to forty, to fifty; thirty is so wise and settled … to fifteen and twenty. Thirty. Thirty is the prime of life, one is just beginning to live at thirty, thirty is young maturity … but, thirty is thirty.

Not all women of thirty have men to coax into good humor and children to enjoy … or deplore.

Andrea Mehren was thirty; she was unmarried; she was one of the most successful businesswomen in New York City, and one of the most beautiful as well, and on her thirtieth birthday she left her office in order to inspect some property in Brooklyn which a client was offering for sale and for which she had a prospect.

It was the afternoon of a magnificent autumn day. Andrea stood for a moment at the entrance of the great building in which her real estate agency was housed. There was plenty to see … blue sky and warm, mellow sunlight, and hundreds of people passing by with hurrying steps, intent on their own important or trivial concerns. Andrea had been consciously irritated by the necessity of leaving the office in the midst of an unusually busy day, but found herself wooed to resignation, even to pleasure, by the small brisk wind one might breathe gratefully, despite its quota of dust and carbon monoxide.