'Just as well as for anything else,' said Josephine laughing. 'I'm much obliged to him for the attention, I'm sure. But you don't answer, Hazel. I want to know how you and Dane get on together, after all your fine theories? Dane Rollo was as lordly a man as I ever saw, with all his easy ways; and you never were one to give up your liberty. I suppose you won't confess. Now I am more honest.'
Wych Hazel answered with a laugh,fresh and gladsome and sweet,more convincing than a hundred words. But she was grave again instantly. She left her chair and bringing a cushion to Josephine's feet sat down there, leaned her arms on her friend's lap and looked straight up into her face.
'Josephine,' she said, 'I am very, very much troubled about you.'
Josephine did not answer this. She looked at Hazel, and then her look wandered to somewhat else; undeclarative, withdrawn into herself.
'Josephine, you cannot have what does not belong to you, any more in men than in money. And if you try to give away what belongs to somebody else, nobody but a wretch will take it.'
'You are going to give me a moral lecture, because I came to Mrs. Rhodes on a spree?' said Josephine, with a superficial kind of little laugh. 'Isn't my time my own while Mr. Charteris is away?'
'No, it is not. Not to spend in a way that wrongs him. And you are not your own, wherever he is.'
'You think I am a man's property just because I am married to him! I don't. I think the man and the woman are equal, and both of them are free. It is only among savages that women are slaves.'
Hazel let that pass. Keeping her folded hands on Josephine's lap, she looked down, thinking.
'What sort of life have you led with Mr. Charteris so far?' she said, not raising her eyes. 'Can you picture it for me?'