She looked radiant, and Julia exclaimed: —
“Why, you are more beautiful than ever. You haven’t gone off a bit.”
“Why should I?” asked Ishbel, in amazement.
“Well—I made friends with an American last autumn, and he thought it dreadful for women to work.”
“It is a toss-up which women suffer the greatest injustice from their men, the English or the Americans. At least our oppressions have developed us far ahead of them. They’ve only scratched the surface of their minds as yet—those that are known as the ‘fortunate’ ones. Of course there is a big middle class, scrimping hard to make ends meet, and, no doubt, having quite as much trouble with their men as we do. They will catch up with us far sooner than those walking advertisements of millionnaires, who think they are independent and spoiled, and are only slaves of a new sort. It is well, by the way, that I set up when I did. Jimmy not only lost thousands during the panic, but has developed a mania for speculation. I think it is because he has so much less of society than formerly, and wants excitement.”
“Does he blame you?” asked Julia, going to the point as usual. “Of course people don’t want him without you. I hear he wasn’t asked to a single house party.”
“Yes, he blames me. My conscience hurt me for a time, but I talked it out with Bridgit, and we both came to the same conclusion: during those five years I paid him back with interest. If he can’t take care of himself now, it is his own lookout. I am living to repay him what I borrowed, for he has thrown it at my head more than once, his losses not having improved his temper. That is the reason I am not going out at all this year.”
Julia, twirling her check, stared at her. The immense amount of reading she had done had set her mind in active motion, developing natural powers of reason and analysis. And unconsciously, during the last six months, at least, she had been studying and classifying the many types she had met. She knew that Ishbel, as she uttered her apparently heartless and unfeminine sentiments, should have looked hard, sharp, or, at the best, superintellectualized and businesslike. But never had she looked prettier, more piquant, more feminine. Her liquid brown eyes were full of laughter, her pink lips were as softly curved as those of a child that has never whined, and her rich voice had no edge on it. Charm radiated from her. In a flash of intuition Julia understood.
“It is because you like men—that you don’t change,” she said. “You never will. But how do you reconcile it? You despise them —”
“Oh, dear me, no. I adore them. No charming man’s magnetism is ever lost on me, and I am in love with three at the present moment. That is all, besides my work, that I have time for. Only—I don’t have to marry any of them, and find out all their little absurdities. I idealize them, sentimentalize over them, and that pleasant process would color the grayest of lives.”