She looked still more vague--one of her tricks when she wished to avoid or to ignore. “I never touch desserts,” said she. As I was leaving--for we were not dining together that evening--she said: “I shall think about your proposal.” I looked straight at her. “Tell me whether you will or will not confirm your own proposal,” said I. “And don’t delay too long. Unfinished business makes me nervous.” She returned my look with quiet composure. “I shall let you know to-morrow,” said she. X Among my acquaintances, both in and out of fashionable society, there were not a few jealous husbands. I knew one man who, in the evening, made his wife account for every moment of the day, and tell him in detail how she was going to spend the following day, and during business hours he called up irregularly on the telephone. He was not content with the effective system of espionage which a retinue of servants automatically establishes. Another man--to give a typical instance of each of the two types--hired detectives from time to time to watch his wife living abroad “for her health and to educate her children.” In a decently ordered society this sort of jealousy is rare. Only where the women are luxuriously supported parasites and the men are attaching but the one value to the women--the only value they possess for them--only there do you find this defiling jealousy the rule instead of the exception. Naturally, if the woman is mere property the man guards her as he guards the rest of his material possessions; and the woman who consents to be mere property probably needs guarding if she has qualities of desirability discoverable by other eyes than those of her overprizing owner. This jealousy was in the air of the offices and clubs I frequented. But it had somehow or other never infected me. Was I occupied too deeply with other matters? Was I indifferent? Did my own disinclination to dalliance make me slow to appreciate the large part dalliance now plays in American life? I do not know why I was free from jealousy. I only know that never once had my mind been shadowed by a sinister thought as to what my wife might be about, far away and free. Possibly my knowledge of her absorption in social ambition kept me quiet. Certainly a woman whose whole mind and heart are set upon social climbing is about the last person a seeker for dalliance would invest.