"To compete."
"But—but we're married."
She laid her hand upon her knee and glanced down at it.
"It never occurred to me until lately," she said, "how absurd is the belief men still hold in these days that a wedding-ring absolves them forever from any effort on their part to retain their wives' affections. They regard the ring very much as a ball and chain, or a hobble to prevent the women from running away, that they may catch them whenever they may desire—which isn't often. Am I not right?"
He snapped his cigarette case.
"Darn it, Honora, you're getting too deep for me!" he exclaimed. "You never liked those, Browning women down at Rivington, but if this isn't browning I'm hanged if I know what it is. An attack of nerves, perhaps. They tell me that women go all to pieces nowadays over nothing at all."
"That's just it," she agreed, "nothing at all!"
"I thought as much," he replied, eager to seize this opportunity of ending a conversation that had neither head nor tail, and yet was marvellously uncomfortable. "There! be a good girl, and forget it."
He stooped down suddenly to her face to kiss her, but she turned her face in time to receive the caress on the cheek.
"The panacea!" she said.