I admit that it's
a way in use only among people whose history--that of a race--has
cultivated in them the sense for high political solutions." She paused
and Longmore wondered where the history of her race was going to lead
her. But she clearly saw her course. "There has never been a galant
homme among us, I fear, who has not given his wife, even when she was
very charming, the right to be jealous. We know our history for ages
back, and the fact's established. It's not a very edifying one if you
like, but it's something to have scandals with pedigrees--if you can't
have them with attenuations. Our men have been Frenchmen of France, and
their wives--I may say it--have been of no meaner blood. You may see
all their portraits at our poor charming old house--every one of them an
'injured' beauty, but not one of them hanging her head. Not one of them
ever had the bad taste to be jealous, and yet not one in a dozen ever
consented to an indiscretion--allowed herself, I mean, to be talked
about. Voila comme elles ont su s'arranger. How they did it--go and look
at the dusky faded canvases and pastels and ask. They were dear brave
women of wit. When they had a headache they put on a little rouge and
came to supper as usual, and when they had a heart-ache they touched up
that quarter with just such another brush. These are great traditions
and charming precedents, I hold, and it doesn't seem to me fair that a
little American bourgeoise should come in and pretend to alter them--all
to hang her modern photograph and her obstinate little air penche in the
gallery of our shrewd great-grandmothers. She should fall into line, she
should keep up the tone. When she married my brother I don't suppose she
took him for a member of a societe de bonnes oeuvres. I don't say we're
right; who IS right? But we are as history has made us, and if any one's
to change it had better be our charming, but not accommodating, friend."
Again Madame Clairin paused, again she opened and closed her great
modern fan, which clattered like the screen of a shop-window. "Let her
keep up the tone!" she prodigiously repeated.

Longmore felt himself gape, but he gasped an "Ah!" to cover it. Madame
Clairin's dip into the family annals had apparently imparted an
honest zeal to her indignation. "For a long time," she continued, "my
belle-soeur has been taking the attitude of an injured woman, affecting
a disgust with the world and shutting herself up to read free-thinkin