children out, and everything. Would her face be smooth and would she
laugh then? I was wondering, too, whether she'd take the same trouble
over her hair at six o'clock of a cold morning. And, if she had my
life, would men admire her so much? Would they look at her as they are
looking now?"

Osborn stared at his wife, half-amazed, half-frowning.

"One would think," he said, "to hear you talk, that you weren't happy;
that you hadn't all--all--all a woman in your position of life can
have."

She flushed quickly. "Don't think that! I was just wondering about
her, that's all, as I used to wonder about the people we saw when you
took me out to dinner in our engaged days. Do you remember? You used
to laugh at me and call me the Eternal Question, and all kinds of
silly things."

"I don't remember that."

"No? Well, it was a very long while ago."

"It sounded as if you were envying her."

"I _was_ envying her."

"Haven't you all you want?" he said again in resentful surprise.

"I want to be awf'ly young again, and to have a smooth face and
manicured hands, and lots of admiration."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Osborn, regaining his good temper
with an effort, "this wine has gone to your head."

After he had presented this very satisfactory solution, both laughed;
but while he laughed with relief at dismissing the question, she
laughed only acquiescently and unconvinced, the laugh which should be
called the Laugh of the Wise Wives. It appeased him and it relieved
her, as a groan relieves a person in pain. She sipped her unaccustomed
wine and looked around her with her wide eyes, which were far, far
more widely opened now than in the days of her blind youth.

When a rather tired and preoccupied man takes his wife of four years'
standing out to dinner he knows that he need not exert himself to
talk, to shine, to please, as with a woman who holds the piquancy of a
stranger; so while Osborn spoke spasmodically, or drifted into
silence, Marie could look around her and think thoughts which chilled
the ardour of her soul. It seemed to her, that evening of her
twenty-ninth birthday, that a door was opened to her, revealing
nakedly the fears and the trepidations and the minute cares of
marriage which have creased many a woman's brow before her time. The
restaurant was to her the tide of life, upon which the black-haired
woman and her sisters sailed victoriously, but upon which she, and
wives like her, trained for the