ited to
taste. It is not that the wish or the appetite is lacking to them, but
all these fine fruits have been offered them so lately that they have
still the somewhat acid charm of green apples or forbidden fruit. They
approach, but they hesitate to bite.

After all, why complain? What would one have to remember if one had
entered married life like an inn, if one had not trembled a little when
knocking at the door? And it is so pleasant to recall things, that one
would sometimes like to deck the future in the garments of the past.

It was, I recollect, two days after the all-important one. I had gone
into his room, I no longer remember why--for the pleasure of going in,
I suppose, and thereby acting as a wife. A strong desire is that which
springs up in your brain after leaving church to look like an old
married woman. You put on caps with ribbons, you never lay aside your
cashmere shawl, you talk of "my home"--two sweet words--and then you
bite your lips to keep from breaking out into a laugh; and "my husband,"
and "my maid," and the first dinner you order, when you forget the soup.
All this is charming, and, however ill at ease you may feel at first in
all these new clothes, you are quite eager to put them on.

So I had gone into the dressing-room of my husband, who, standing before
the glass, very lightly clad, was prosaically shaving.

"Excuse me, dear," said he, laughing, and he held up his shaving-brush,
covered with white lather. "You will pardon my going on with this. Do
you want anything?"

"I came, on the contrary," I answered, "to see whether you had need of
anything;" and, greatly embarrassed myself, for I was afraid of being
indiscreet, and I was not sure whether one ought to go into one's
husband's room like this, I added, innocently, "Your shirts have
buttons, have they not?"

"Oh, what a good little housewife I have married! Do not bother yourself
about such trifles, my pet. I will ask your maid to look after my
buttons," said he.

I felt confused; I was afraid of appealing too much of a schoolgirl
in his eyes. He went on working his soap into a lather with his
shaving-brush. I wanted to go away, but I was interested in such a novel
fashion by the sight of my husband, that I had not courage to do so.
His neck was bare--a thick, strong neck, but very white and changing
its shape at every movement--the muscles, you know. It would have been
horrible in a woman, that neck, and yet it did not seem ug