her, quietly, she ventured further, "You might
really be happier, you know. There is a great deal of happiness in the
right marriage." She had never said so much to Eugenia.

Eugenia let Marise's hand drop and with it, evidently, whatever
intention she might have had of saying something difficult to express.
Instead, she advanced with her fastidious, delicate note of irony, "I
don't deny the happiness, if that sort of happiness is what one is
after. But I think my appetite for it . . . that sort . . . is perhaps not
quite robust enough to relish it."

Marise roused herself to try to put a light note of cheerfulness into
this last conversation. "You mean that it seems to you like the coarsely
heaped-up goodies set before a farmhand in a country kitchen . . . chicken
and butter and honey and fruit and coffee, all good but so profuse and
jumbled that they make you turn away?"

"I didn't give that definition of domestic life," corrected Eugenia,
with a faint smile, "that's one of _your_ fantasies."

"Well, it's true that you get life served up to you rather pell-mell,
lots of it, take-it-as-it-comes," admitted Marise, "but for a gross
nature like mine, once you've had that, you're lost. You know you'd
starve to death on the delicate slice of toasted bread served on old
china. You give up and fairly enjoy wallowing in the trough."

She had been struck by that unwonted look of fatigue on Eugenia's face,
had tried to make her laugh, and now, with an effort, laughed with her.
She had forgotten her passing notion that Eugenia had something special
to say. What could she have? They had gone over that astonishing
misconception of hers about the Powers woodlot, and she had quite made
Marise understand how hopelessly incapable she was of distinguishing one
business detail from another. There could be nothing else that Eugenia
could wish to say.

"How in the world shall I get through the winter?" Eugenia now wondered
aloud. "Biskra and the Sahara perhaps . . . if I could only get away from
the hideous band of tourists. They say there are swarms of
war-profiteers from Italy now, everywhere, low-class people with money
for the first time." She added with a greater accent of wonder, "How in
the world are _you_ going to get through the winter?"

Marise was struck into momentary silence by the oddness of the idea.
There were phrases in Eugenia's language which were literally
non-translatable into hers, representing as they did idea