Helen felt the color come to her face as the contessa’s words recalled her own sorrow, which for the moment she had forgotten. The freedom with which her guest spoke of her personal affairs repelled her, yet there was a subtle attraction which Helen could not help feeling.
“You are very pessimistic on the subject of marriage,” she ventured.
“Not at all,” the contessa insisted, calmly. “Husbands are selfish brutes, all of them; but they are absolutely necessary to give one respectability. Perhaps your husband is an exception, but I doubt it. Where is he now?”
“He is at the library,” Helen faltered, resenting the contessa’s question, but forced to an answer by the suddenness with which it was put.
“At the library?” repeated the contessa, interrogatively. “That is where he was on the afternoon of the Londi reception. Is he there all the time?”
“A good deal of the time,” admitted Helen. “He is engaged upon an important literary work.”
“In which he takes a great interest and you none at all. There you have it—selfishness, the chief attribute of man!”
“It does look like it,” Helen answered, concluding that she had better move in the line of the least resistance. “But in this particular case I am very much interested in my husband’s work, even though I am unable to enter into it.”
“That is not interest,” corrected the contessa—“it is sacrifice; and that is woman’s chief attribute.”
“I see you are determined to include my husband in your general category.”