nd interpreter; and Dresham's leisure
being devoted to the cultivation of remarkable women, his
wife's attitude committed her to the public celebration of their
remarkableness. For the conceivable tedium of this duty, Mrs. Dresham
was repaid by the fact that there were people who took HER for a
remarkable woman; and who in turn probably purchased similar distinction
with the small change of her reflected importance. As to the other
ladies of the party, they were simply the wives of some of the men--the
kind of women who expect to be talked to collectively and to have their
questions left unanswered.

Mrs. Armiger, the latest embodiment of Dresham's instinct for the
remarkable, was an innocent beauty who for years had distilled
dulness among a set of people now self-condemned by their inability
to appreciate her. Under Dresham's tutelage she had developed into a
"thoughtful woman," who read his leaders in the Radiator and bought the
books he recommended. When a new novel appeared, people wanted to know
what Mrs. Armiger thought of it; and a young gentleman who had made a
trip in Touraine had recently inscribed to her the wide-margined result
of his explorations.

Glennard, leaning back with his head against the rail and a slit of
fugitive blue between his half-closed lids, vaguely wished she wouldn't
spoil the afternoon by making people talk; though he reduced his
annoyance to the minimum by not listening to what was said, there
remained a latent irritation against the general futility of words.

His wife's gift of silence seemed to him the most vivid commentary on
the clumsiness of speech as a means of intercourse, and his eyes had
turned to her in renewed appreciation of this finer faculty when
Mrs. Armiger's voice abruptly brought home to him the underrated
potentialities of language.

"You've read them, of course, Mrs. Glennard?" he heard her ask; and, in
reply to Alexa's vague interrogation--"Why, the 'Aubyn Letters'--it's
the only book people are talking of this week."

Mrs. Dresham immediately saw her advantage. "You HAVEN'T read them? How
very extraordinary! As Mrs. Armiger says, the book's in the air; one
breathes it in like the influenza."

Glennard sat motionless, watching his wife.

"Perhaps it hasn't reached the suburbs yet," she said, with her
unruffled smile.

"Oh, DO let me come to you, then!" Mrs. Touchett cried; "anything for a
change of air! I'm positively sick of the book and I can't put it