She was wakened from her brooding by a soft Southern voice, and perceived Margaret Pole coming up the steps. With the grasp of Margaret's small hands, the kiss, all the years since St. Mary's seemed to fall away. The two women drew off and looked at each other, Margaret smiling enigmatically, understanding that Isabelle was trying to read the record of the years, the experience of marriage on her. Coloring slightly, she turned away and drew up a chair.
"Is your husband with you?" Isabelle asked. "I do so want to meet him."
"No; I left him at my father's with the children. He's very good with the children," she added with a mocking smile, "and he doesn't like little trips. He doesn't understand how I can get up at five in the morning and travel all day across country to see an old friend…. Men don't understand things, do you think?"
"So you are going abroad to live?"
"Yes," Margaret answered without enthusiasm. "We are going to study music,—the voice. My husband doesn't like business!"
Isabelle had heard that Mr. Pole, agreeable as he was, had not been successful in business. But the Poles and the Lawtons were all comfortably off, and it was natural that he should follow his tastes.
"He has a very good voice," Margaret added.
"How exciting—to change your whole life like that!" Isabelle exclaimed, fired by the prospect of escape from routine, from the known.
"Think so?" Margaret remarked in a dull voice. "Well, perhaps. Tell me how you are—everything."
And they began to talk, and yet carefully avoided what was uppermost in the minds of both,—'How has it been with you? How has marriage been? Has it given you all that you looked for? Are you happy?' For in spite of all the education, the freedom so much talked about for women, that remains the central theme of their existence,—the emotional and material satisfaction of their natures through marriage. Margaret Pole was accounted intellectual among women, with bookish tastes, thoughtful, and she knew many women who had been educated in colleges. "They are all like us," she once said to Isabelle; "just like us. They want to marry a man who will give them everything, and they aren't any wiser in their choice, either. The only difference is that a smaller number of them have the chance to marry, and when they can't be married, they have something besides cats and maiden aunts to fall back upon. But interests in common with their husbands, intellectual interests,—rubbish! A man who amounts to anything is always a specialist, and he doesn't care for feminine amateurishness. An acquaintance with Dante and the housing of the poor doesn't broaden the breakfast table, not a little bit."