hen, and it was
something Rodney said to her, in answer to a remark about dependent
wives, that really made Rose sit up.

"Wives aren't dependents," he said, "except as they let their husbands
make them think they are. Or only in very rare cases. Certainly I don't
know of a wife who doesn't render her husband valuable economic services
in exchange for her support. I can hardly imagine one. Of course if they
don't recognize that these services are valuable, they can be made to
feel dependent all right."

Gertrude demurred. She was willing to admit that a wife who took care of
a husband's house, cooked his meals, brought up his children, did him an
economic service and that if she didn't feel that she was earning her
way in the world it was because she had been imposed on. But here in New
York, anyway--she didn't know how it might be out in Chicago--one didn't
have to resort to his imagination to conjure up a wife who rendered none
of these services whatever. "They live, thousands of them, in smart
up-town apartments, don't do a lick of work, choke up Fifth Avenue with
their limousines in the afternoon, dress like birds of paradise, or as
near to it as they can come, dine with their husbands in the
restaurants, go to the first nights, eat lobster Newburg afterward, and
spend the next morning in bed getting over it. Those that can't afford
that kind of life scrape along giving the best imitation of it they know
how. Thousands of them--thousands and thousands. If they aren't
dependents ..."

"They're not, though," said Rodney. "Not a bit of it. They're giving
their husbands an economic service of a peculiarly indispensable sort.
The first requisite for success to the husbands of women who live like
that is the appearance of success. Their status, their front, is the one
thing they can't do without. Well, and it's a curious fact that a man
can't keep up his own front. If he tries to dress extravagantly, wear
diamonds, spend his money on himself, he doesn't look prosperous. He
looks a fool. People won't take him seriously. If he can get a wife
who's ornamental, who has attractive manners, who can convey the
appearance of being expensive without being vulgar, she's of a perfectly
enormous economic advantage to him. She'd only have to quit buying the
sort of clothes he could parade her in, and begin spoiling her looks
with a menial domestic routine, to draw howls of protest from him.
Only, so long as she doesn't call his blu