She shook her head. 'Nothing. If I could have seen before marriage a diary of my married life as it would be, I should have thought, as I did, that I was going into an earthly paradise. There is nothing wrong but the atmosphere, and there is only one thing wanting in that.' 'He does not care for you?' I scarcely did more than form the words with my lips, but the answering tears rolled down her cheeks again at once. 'Not a bit. At least, not so much as _you_ care for To-to or--Janet. And it isn't his fault. He is perfectly kind to me in his fashion, admires the way I have worked to please him, is grieved that I am dissatisfied with the result. Only--he did not take me in--of his own accord, and so I have remained always--outside. That's all!' She spread out her little hands, and clasped them again, with a plaintive gesture of resignation. 'And--and if I seem ungrateful you must forgive me; I've never been able to tell it all to any one for all these four years.' I was stricken with remorse, but I dared not give it the least expression for fear of the lengths to which it might carry me. I made another journey among the gipsy tables and the pestilent _bric-à-brac_, and returning sat down, not on the sofa beside her, but in a chair a few feet away. I took a book up from a table by my side; I remember that it was _Marmion_, and that it had very exquisite illustrations. 'How about these friends, then, whose intimacy your husband disapproves of?' 'Oh, those!' contemptuously. 'One doesn't open one's heart quite wide to such friends as those.' 'Then if you care about them so little, why not give them up and please your husband?' 'One must be intimate with somebody,' she said entreatingly, 'even if it's only a tea-drinking and scandal-talking intimacy.' 'But why with these particular people?' 'Because we all have a particular grievance: we all have bad husbands. At least--no, Fabian's not a bad husband,' she corrected hastily; 'but we are all dissatisfied with our husbands.' 'Perhaps the husbands of those ladies I saw with you at the theatre--forgive me if I am making a rude and ridiculous mistake--are dissatisfied with them?' I suggested, very meekly and mildly. 'I daresay they are,' she answered, flushing. 'The less a man has of domestic virtues, the more he invariably expects from his wife.' 'I am not surprised that Fabian shrinks from the thought of your looking as they do.' 'You mean that they make up their faces? Mr. Maude, Mr. Maude, listen. A woman must have something to live upon, to live for. If through her fault or her misfortune, there is not love enough at home to keep her heart warm, she will--I don't say she ought, but she does--look about for a make-shift, and finds it in the admiration of some lad younger than herself, who is ready to give more than he ever hopes to receive. The boys like dyed hair and powdered faces, they think it "chic." But my friends are not the depraved creatures Fabian would like to make out.'