"You know I used to know her very well years ago. She was very pretty then.
Everybody liked Bessie," Isabelle mused.
And later she remarked:—
"Singular that her marriage should be such a failure."
"Is it singular that any given marriage should be a failure?" Margaret asked with a touch of her old irony. "It is more singular to me that any marriage, made as they must be made to-day, should be anything but a dismal failure."
"But Bessie was the kind to be adored. She was pretty, and clever, and amusing,—a great talker and crazy about people. She had real social instinct,—the kind you read of in books, you know. She could make her circle anywhere. She couldn't be alone five minutes,—people clustered around her like bees. Her life might have been a romance, you would suppose,—pretty girl, poor, marries an ambitious, clever man, who arrives with her social help, goes into politics—oh, anything you will!"
"But the real thing," Margaret observed.
"What do you mean?"
"Love! … Love that understands and helps."
"Well, I saw the most dazzling future for her when she used to give garden parties in Torso, with only two unattached men who were possible in the place! And at least she might have had a small home in the suburbs and an adoring husband home at five-thirty,—but she wasn't that kind…. Poor Bess! I am sorry for her."
"I suppose the reason why a man and a woman hurt instead of help each other in marriage is never known to any one but themselves," Margaret observed dryly, urging on the horse. "And perhaps not even to themselves!"