“No, it wasn’t. But I’m so far off the track, now, I won’t say it. After all, it might seem like a glittering generality about—”
The women relaxed their wary regard; the elder did not offer to go on, and the younger did not urge her. Mrs. Farrell knitted half a round on the smoking-cap, as if to gain a new starting point, and then dropped her work in her lap and laid her hands, one on top of the other, over it. “Did you ever try inhaling the fumes of coffee for your headaches?” she asked.
“Oh, my dear, I gave that up away back in the Dark Ages,” returned Mrs. Gilbert, resorting to the cologne.
“I suppose the cologne does you no good?”
“Not the least in the world. But one must do something.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Farrell, drawing the word in with a long breath, “one must do something.” She took up her work again and knitted awhile before she added, “I wonder if a man would go on forever doing something that he knew did him no good, as a woman does?”
“No, I suppose not. Men are very queer,” said Mrs. Gilbert, gravely. “They’re quite inert. But that gives them some of their advantages.”
“They have pretty nearly all the advantages, haven’t they?” asked Mrs. Farrell, quickly. “Even when some woman makes fools of them! At least when that happens they have all the other women on their side.” As she knitted rapidly on she had now and then a little tremulous motion of the head that shook the gold hoops in her ears against her neck.
“Well, then they have a right to our pity.”
“Oh, do you think so? It seems to me that she has a right to more.” She looked down on either side of her at the floor. “I thought I brought both balls of that ashes of roses with me.” Mrs. Gilbert looked about the carpet in her vicinity. “Don’t trouble yourself. It’s no matter. I think I won’t use it here, after all. I’ll use this brown. A woman never makes a fool of a man unless she respects him very much. Of course there must be something fascinating about him, or she wouldn’t care to have him care for her, at all; it would be disgusting.”