exchanged glances.

"Do you suppose it's ever been done to him before," asked Frederica, "in
the last fifteen years, anyway?" And Violet solemnly shook her head.

"But why?" demanded Rose. "That's what I want to know. How can any one
help thinking he's ridiculous. Of course if you were alone on a desert
island with him like the Bab Ballad, I suppose you'd make the best of
him. But with any one else that was--real, you know, around ..."

Only a very high vacuum--this was the idea Rose seemed to be getting
at--might be expected, _faute de mieux_, to tolerate Bertie. So if you
found him tolerated seriously in a woman's life, you couldn't resist the
presumption that there was a vacuum there.

"Don't ask me about him," said Frederica. "He never would have anything
to do with me; said I was a classic type and they always bored him
stiff. But Violet, here ..."

"Oh, yes," said Violet, "I lasted one season, and then he dropped me. He
beat me to it by about a minute. All the same--oh, I can understand it
well enough. You see, what he builds on is that a woman's husband is
always the least interesting man in the world. Oh, I don't mean we don't
love them, or that we want to change them--permanently, you know. Take
Frederica and me. We wouldn't exchange for anything. Yet, we used to
have long arguments. I've said that Martin was more--interesting, witty,
you know, and all that, than John. And Frederica says John is more
interesting than Martin. Oh, just to talk to, I mean. Not about anything
in particular, but when you haven't anything else to do."

She paused long enough to take a tentative sip or two of boiling hot
tea. But the way she had hung up the ending to her sentence, told them
she wasn't through with the topic yet.

"It's funny about that, too," she went on, "because really, we see each
other so much and have known each other so long, that I know
Martin's--repertory, about as well as Frederica. I mean, it isn't like
Walter Mill, when he was just back from the Legation at Pekin, or even
like Jimmy Wallace, who spends half his time playing around with all
sorts of impossible people--chorus-girls and such, and tells you queer
stories about them. There's something besides the--familiarness that
makes husbands dull. And that's what makes Bertie amusing."

"Oh, of course," said Frederica, "everybody likes to flirt--whether they
have to or not."

"Have to?" Rose echoed. She didn't want to miss anything.

Frederica he