"Outlandish as that fantastic husband of yours. I don't know which is the more _outré_, his mania for these beautiful things with the impossible names, or your--heavens above, it does really seem like resentment against them. Now, if you'd married Peter"--Louise laughed metallically--"he'd never have given you time to be jealous of a _rug_." "That's just it," flared Diane. "I could forgive flirtations and black eyes, and a reasonable degree of non-support. But these damned rugs--look at that!" Diane dug her cobraskin toe into the closely worn nap of the Feraghan carpet. "Look at it! Just a rug, the first time. But live with it day after day. See the witchery sparkling in it at sunset. Catch yourself losing yourself in the thrill of its three hundred years, wondering that all the ecstasy ever lost in the entire world could be imprisoned in a rug. Then see your one and only and otherwise adequate husband sitting of an evening, hours at a stretch, staring at it and dreaming of all the richness and glamor he's lost through becoming civilized, learning to wear shoes, and having only one woman, and she his wife, about the house. Yes, I called you up to have you listen to me get the indignation out of my soul. The truth of it is, Lou, that if I don't get out of this atmosphere soon, I'll go utterly mad. Some day I'm going to move in on you in your attic--anything to get away from all this!" "Do you mean to say," began Louise with wide-spaced deliberation, "that you'd actually leave Ham because he likes to mess and poke around with his rugs, and spend most of his waking moments talking about them? Honestly, now----" "Good Lord, I could stand his _talking_ about them. But"--Diane shuddered--"Lou, he _loves_ them. Sits there, transfigured, like a saint contemplating the dewdrop glistening in the lotus cup." "When I suggested, over at the Iron Gate, that you move in with me, I didn't know that you were married--they all called you _la belle Livaudaise_, and you were the life of everything--and least of all, I never suspected anyone had you enshrined in magnificence like this. Better think it over, Di--I've been through the mill, and I _know_." * * * * *