It seemed commonplace enough, this pension dinner-party. Hundreds such were at that moment in progress all through Switzerland, differing from each other as little as the loads of any two consecutive London omnibuses on the same route. Yet to more than one person it was ever memorable.
Little Miss Bunter, who sat next to Felicia, had grown happier of late. The summer had warmed her blood. Also she had lately received an eight-page letter from Burmah which had brought her much consolation. There was a possibility, it hinted, of the marriage taking place in the spring. She had already consulted Katherine as to the trousseau, and had made cuttings from Modern Society of the description of fashionable weddings during the past two months. Having these hopes within her, and one of the new dresses chosen by Katherine, without, she looked much fresher than usual this evening. Her sandy hair seemed less lifeless, her complexion less sallow. She did not speak much, being constitutionally timid. Her opinions were such weak, frail things, that she was afraid of sending them forth into the rough world. But she listened with animated interest to the various conversations. Raine's talk particularly interested her. She had a vague idea that she was improving her mind.
“It struck me,” Raine was saying, “that culture in America was chiefly in the hands of the women—more so even than it is in our own strictly business circles. And nearly all New York is one great business circle.”
“Were you long in the States, sir?” asked Mr. Skeogh, who had been silent for some time.
“Oh no,” said Raine, looking over towards him, “only a few weeks. My remarks are from the merest superficial impressions.”
“It is a fine country,” said Mr. Skeogh.
Raine acquiesced politely.
“I do not like the country,” said Frau Schultz, thus making the topic a fairly general one. “There is no family life. The women are idle. They are not to my taste.”
“What a blessing!” murmured Katherine in a low voice, to which Raine replied by an imperceptible smile. But aloud she said: “I don't think American women are idle. They give their wits and not their souls to housekeeping. So they order their husbands' dinners and see to the washing of their babies just as well as other women; but they think that these are duties that any rational creature can perform without letting them absorb their whole interests in life.”
“A woman's duty is to be a good housewife,” said Frau Schultz dictatorially, in her harshest accent. “In Germany it is so.”