“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said I slowly. “I must think. All this is new to me.”
“If you haven’t any pride in yourself, or in me,” said she, “still you surely must have pride for Margot.”
“I think so,” said I.
“If you could know how they have made the poor child suffer!”
I made no reply, nor did I encourage her to talk further. In fact, when she began again I stopped her with: “I’ve heard enough, my dear. And I’ve some important business to attend to.”
She, preparing to leave me alone with my papers, came and put her arms round my neck and pressed her cheek against mine. I think she was uneasy about the posture of the affair in my mind—feared stupid commercial I could not appreciate these vital things of life. I suspect my tranquil reception of her caresses did not tend to allay her uneasiness. Never before had she failed to interest me in her physical self; and the only reason she then failed was that in the general upsetting of all my ideas of what my family life was there had been tossed up to the surface an undefined suspicion of her sincerity as a wife. I was not altogether blind as to the relations of men and women, as to the fact that women often coolly played upon the passions of men for their own purposes of money getting in its various forms. My wife was right in her sneer at the innocence of married men. But there are exceptions, and a woman with a husband intelligent in every way except in seeing through women would do well to take care how she tempts his intelligence to shake off its indifference in that respect.
The next morning I was breakfasting alone as usual. No, gentle reader, I am not girding at my poor wife as you hastily accuse. I am sure I do not deceive myself when I say I never was of those men who fuss about trifles. Thank heaven, as soon as we had a servant my wife kept away from breakfast. It was one of the things I loved her for. If I had been married to a woman who appeared at breakfast looking lovely and smiling sweetly, I should have become a bad-tempered tyrant. I want no sentimentalities in the early-morning hours. I wake up uncomfortable and sour, and I quarrel with myself and look about for trouble until I have had something to eat and coffee. Further in the same direction, I took particular pleasure in my wife’s small personal slovenlinesses, in her curl papers, in her occasional overlaying of her face with cold cream and the like, in her careless negligee worn in her own rooms. There is, I guess, no nature so prodigal that it has not some small economies. Edna had, probably still has, a fondness for wearing out thoroughly, in secluded privacy, house dresses, underclothes, and night gowns.
It took nothing from my delight in her beauty that she was not invariably beautiful. I’ve rarely seen her lovely early in the morning. Who is? I should have taken habitual early-morning loveliness as a personal insult. I’ve seen her homely all day long, and for several days at a time. She was as attractive to me than as at her most beautiful. I detest monotony. Thank heaven, she was never monotonous to look at; one rather expects mental monotony in women unless one is a fool. I didn’t mind her times of homeliness, because she could be so far, far the opposite of homely. I did not mind her way of getting herself up in odds and ends, mussily, but, mind you, never after the Passaic days unclean—never! I did not mind her dishevelments because, when she set out to dress, she did it so bang up well. She was born with a talent for dress; she rapidly developed it into an art. You know what I mean. You’ve seen the girl with hardly five dollars’ worth of clothing on her, including the hat, yet making the woman from the best dressmaker in Paris look a frump.
I never had to join the innumerable and pitiful army of men who give the woman their money to squander upon bad fits and bad taste, and are bowed down with shame when they have to issue forth with her. I can honestly say, and Edna will bear me out, that I gave her money freely. No doubt the reason in part was I found it so easy to make money that I was indifferent to extravagance. But the chief reason, I believe, was Edna’s skill at dress. The woman who is physically alluring to her husband, and who knows how to dress, rarely has difficulty in getting money from him, though he be a miser. But, gentle lady reader, can you in your heart blame a man for grudging his earnings to a woman who isn’t fit to dress and who doesn’t know how, either?
As I had begun to tell when I interrupted myself, I was breakfasting alone the morning after that memorable talk with Edna, and Margot came down to glance in for a smile at me on her way to school.