"Tell about your visit to the Gorings," Conny drawled. "Percy's cousin, Eugene Goring, who married Aline, you know. Boots in the bath-tub, and the babies running around naked, and Aline lost in the metaphysics of the arts, making chairs."
And Isabelle recounted what she had seen of Aline's establishment in St. Louis, with its total disregard of what Conny called the "decencies" of life. They all laughed at her picture of their "wood-nymph," as they had named Aline.
"And Eugene talking anarchy, and washing the dishes,—it sounds like a
Weber and Field's farce," gurgled Conny. "He wrote Percy about lecturing in
New York,—wanted to come East. But Percy couldn't do anything for him. It
isn't a combination to make a drawing-room impression."
"But," Margaret protested, "Aline is a person, and that is more than you can say of most of us married women. She has kept her personality."
"If I were 'Gene," Conny replied contemptuously, "I'd tone her 'personality' down."
"He's probably big enough to respect it."
There followed a discussion of the woman's part in marriage, Margaret defending independence, "the woman's right to live for herself," and Conny taking the practical view.
"She can't be anything any way, just by herself. She had better make the most of the material she's got to work with—or get another helping," she added, thinking of Larry.
"And Aline isn't happy," Isabelle remarked; "she has a look on her face as if she were a thousand miles away, and had forgotten her marriage as much as she could. Her chairs and tables are just ways of forgetting."
"But they have something to think about,—those two. They don't vegetate."