"I don't know." She had a deep rich voice and she could make it very intense. "I only know there must—must—be a change—if—if—I am to—Can't you take me abroad for a year? That might not be work, but at least I should be learning some thing—I have traveled almost not at all—and, at least, I should have you."
"But later? Most of your friends have spent a good deal of time in
Europe. I doubt if any state in the Union goes to Europe as often as
California! They are all the more discontented when they come back here
to vegetate—as Mrs. Thornton would express it.
"It would be a blessed interval, but no more."
"We should have time to think out a new and different life….
"You know—in the class I come from—in France—the women are the partners of their husbands. Even in the higher bourgeoisie, that is, where they still are in business, not living on great inherited fortunes—
"My uncle had a small silk house in Rouen, and my aunt kept the books and attended to all the correspondence. He always said she was the cleverer business man of the two; but French women have a real genius for business. Some of our great ladies help their husbands manage their estates.
"It is only the few that live for pleasure and glitter in the most glittering city in the world that have furnished the novelists the material to give the world a false impression of France.
"The majority live such sober, useful, busy lives that only the highest genius could make people read about them.
"Of course, young girls dream of something far more brilliant, and wait eagerly for the husband who shall deliver them from their narrow restricted little spheres… perhaps take them to the great world of Paris; but they settle down, even in Paris, and devote themselves to their husbands' interests, which are their own, and to their children….
"That is it! They are indispensable—not as women, but as partners. I barely know what your business is about—only that you are in some tremendous wholesale commission thing with tentacles that reach half round the world.