This first view of her life in the country set me to observing her closely--perhaps more closely and from a different standpoint than a man usually observes a woman. In all she did I saw the same rare and fascinating imagination--the only kind of imagination worth while. Of all its stupidities and follies none so completely convicts the human race of shallowness and bad taste as its notions of what is romantic and idealistic. The more elegant the human animal flatters itself it is, the poorer are its ideals--that is, the further removed from the practical and the useful. So, you rarely find a woman with so much true poetry, true romance, true imagination as to keep house well. But Mary Kirkwood kept house as a truly great artist paints a picture, as a truly great composer creates an opera. In all her house there was not a trace of the crude, costly luxury that rivals the squalor and bareness of poverty in repulsiveness to people of sense and taste. But what comfort! What splendid cooking, what perfection of service. The chairs and sofas, the beds, the linen, the hundred and one small but important devices for facilitating the material side of life, and so putting mind and spirit in the mood for their best-- But I despair of making you realize. I should have to catalogue, describe, contrast through page after page. And when I had finished, those who understand what the phrase art of living means would have read only what they already know, while those who do not understand that phrase would be convulsed with the cackling laughter that is the tribute of mush-brain to intellect. Observing Mary Kirkwood I discovered a great truth about the woman question: the crudest indictment of the intellect of woman is the crude, archaic, futile, and unimaginative way in which is carried on the part of life that is woman’s peculiar work--or, rather, is messed, muddled, slopped, and neglected. No doubt this is not their fault. But it soon will be if they don’t bestir themselves. Already there are American men not a few who apologize for having married as a folly of their green and silly youth. So, gentle reader, though my enthusiasm tempts me to describe Mary Kirkwood’s housekeeping in detail, I shall spare you. You would not read. You would not understand if you did. The first time she and I approached the confidential was on an August evening when we were alone on the upper deck of the yacht. The others were in the cabin playing bridge. We had been sitting there perhaps an hour when she rose. “Don’t go,” said I. “I thought you wished to be alone,” said she. “Why did you think that?” “Your way of answering me. You’ve been almost curt.” “I’m sorry. I can’t promise to talk if you stay. But I hate to be left alone with my thoughts.” “I understand,” said she. And she seated herself beside the rail, and with my assistance lighted a cigarette.