Anne drank her coffee slowly. "I suppose he compromises by being 'a mild progressive' and making things better 'along the line they are.'"
Roger leaned back in his chair and laughed until Anne joined him.
"Princess, you'd make a first class lawyer yourself. Walter calls himself a liberal already."
"And you're—a Socialist, I suppose?"
Roger stopped laughing. "I suppose I am. Are you?"
"I—don't know. I don't know enough about it."
"I don't know much myself, not the technical details. But it seems to me it's the only thing that isn't trying to patch a rotten piece of cloth. It wants to weave a new one, from what I understand."
"Some job," Anne said and lit the single cigarette she ever smoked, the after-dinner cigarette that Roger had taught her to take soon after their marriage, when they had done all things together.
"It certainly is. But a worth-while one. Anne, suppose we frankly join some radical group and begin weaving, too."
Anne puffed, flicked the ash into the tiny lacquer tray, and said with more calmness than she felt: