"Oh, yes," said Violet, "I lasted one season, and then he dropped me. He beat me to it by about a minute. All the same--oh, I can understand it well enough. You see, what he builds on is that a woman's husband is always the least interesting man in the world. Oh, I don't mean we don't love them, or that we want to change them--permanently, you know. Take Frederica and me. We wouldn't exchange for anything. Yet, we used to have long arguments. I've said that Martin was more--interesting, witty, you know, and all that, than John. And Frederica says John is more interesting than Martin. Oh, just to talk to, I mean. Not about anything in particular, but when you haven't anything else to do." She paused long enough to take a tentative sip or two of boiling hot tea. But the way she had hung up the ending to her sentence, told them she wasn't through with the topic yet. "It's funny about that, too," she went on, "because really, we see each other so much and have known each other so long, that I know Martin's--repertory, about as well as Frederica. I mean, it isn't like Walter Mill, when he was just back from the Legation at Pekin, or even like Jimmy Wallace, who spends half his time playing around with all sorts of impossible people--chorus-girls and such, and tells you queer stories about them. There's something besides the--familiarness that makes husbands dull. And that's what makes Bertie amusing." "Oh, of course," said Frederica, "everybody likes to flirt--whether they have to or not." "Have to?" Rose echoed. She didn't want to miss anything. Frederica hesitated. Then, rather tentatively, began her exegesis. "Why, there are a lot of women--especially of our sort, I suppose, who are always ... well, it's like taking your own temperature--sticking a thermometer into their mouths and looking at it. They think they know how they ought to feel about certain things, and they're always looking to see if they do. And when they don't, they think their emotional natures are being starved, or some silly thing like that. And of course, if you're that way, you're always trying experiments, just the way people do with health foods. In the end, they generally settle on Bertie. He's perfectly safe, you know--just as anxious as they are not to do anything really outrageous. Bertie keeps them in a pleasant sort of flutter, and maybe he does them good. I don't know.--Drink your tea, Violet. We've got to run." That was explicit enough anyway. But it didn't solve Rose's problem--broadened and deepened it rather, and gave it a greater basis of reality. It was silly, of course, always to be asking yourself questions. But after all, you didn't question a thing that wasn't questionable. There had been no necessity for a compromise between romance and reality in her own case. She hadn't any need of a thermometer. Why had they?