"Oh, well ... you don't understand. One has to make an opportunity; get a man into the right mood. He won't like the expense, of course, though it's only a guinea and a half a term, if you send them till mid-day only. That would do at first, don't you think? I don't believe in pushing children. Still, a guinea and a half a term is four and a half guineas a year. Well, I can't help it, can I? He'll _have_ to go to school soon, there's no doubt of that. He's getting too much for me, and it would be a great help, having him out of the way in the mornings, while I'm doing my work."

"I think it would be a very good plan, darling," Julia replied.

"I know you'd agree with me about it. I shall tell Osborn you think it's a good plan, and I shall get mother to tell him too. We shall persuade him."

"How is your husband?" Julia asked punctiliously.

"Very well, thank you."

"Still delighted with domestic life?"

"Oh, that doesn't last, of course," said Marie, looking away and sighing. "A man always gets to think of his home as just the place where bills are sent. Osborn's out a good deal in the evenings, like other men, of course. There's one thing--it leaves me very free.

There's always something to be done, you see, and I can get through a great deal in the evenings if he's out."

"And if he's in?"

"Oh well, a man likes one to sit down and talk to him, naturally."

"How awf'ly obliging wives are!"

"My dear, if you were married, you'd know that the only way is to humour them."

The waitress came in with the tea tray and set the table daintily. To Julia it was a matter of course, but Marie watched the deft girl who handled things so swiftly and quietly; she took in the neatness of her black frock, and the starched whiteness of her laundering; and when the maid had left them, she turned with an envious, smiling sigh to Julia, and said:

"The servants here are so nice. I always used to think, when I had a maid, she'd look like that. We were going to have one, you know, when Osborn got his first rise after we were married, but George came; and now--three of them! It'll always be impossible, of course."

"I daresay you'd rather have the children than the maid."

"Of course I would--the priceless things!" Marie cried, her small pale face warming with maternity.

Julia dispensed tea; and for awhile refused to allow her guest to talk more until she was refreshed. And when she was refreshed and rested among the amenities of the mauve room, that absorption in the affairs around which her whole life moved and had its being grew less keen; her preoccupations lifted; she left the problem which, even here, had begun to worry her, as to whether a pound, or three-quarters of a pound only, of wool would make George a jersey suit, and she turned her eyes with a kind of wondering recollection upon the world outside.

She began by looking around the room at the many well-dressed, softly chattering women; at the cut of their gowns and the last thing in hats; then her look wandered to Julia and took in her freshness, the beauty of her tailoring, and the expensiveness of her appearance generally.

"I feel so shabby among you all," she murmured, with a smile which appeared to Julia as a ghost.

"You look very pretty," said Julia, "as you always do, dear."

"When one is first married," Marie said quietly, "one always imagines one will never get old and tired and spoiled, as thousands of other women do; but one does it all the same. One's day is just so full, and with babies one's night is often so full, too, that there simply isn't time to fuss over one's own appearance. With three children and no help, you've got to let something go, and in my case--"

She broke off, to continue: "It's been me."

Julia laid one of her hands over Marie's lying in her lap. Marie's hands produced the effect of toilers glad to rest. They hardly stirred under Julia's, even to give an answering squeeze. And Julia felt, with a burning and angry heart, how rough and tired they were.

"Julia," said Marie, "I've often wanted to ask someone who would be honest with me--and you're the honestest person I knew--do you think I--I've let myself go very badly?"

"My dear kiddie!" Julia cried low, "why, you--you've been brilliant."

"Look at me," said Marie, thrusting forward her face.

Julia looked, to see the lines from nostrils to mouth, the lines at the corners of the eyes, the enervated pallor and the grey hairs among the golden-brown. She was sorry and bitter.

"You look a dear," she said irresolutely.

Marie sank back upon the fat pillow again with a laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who was beat and owned it.

"You can't stand up against it," she said. "I don't care who says you can. Day in, day out; night in, night out; no, you can't stand up against it. I've often thought it out, and something _has_ to go.

The woman's the only thing who can be let go; the children must be reared and the man must be fed; but the woman must just serve her purpose."

Tears swelled in Julia's eyes. "Don't," she begged huskily, "don't get bitter."

Marie returned her look with the simple and wide-eyed one she remembered so well. "I'm not," she stated; "I was just thinking, and it comes to that. You must feed a man and look after him and make him comfortable, or--or you wouldn't keep him at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. But I sometimes think," she whispered, "if I let myself go, get plain and drab, will I keep him then?"

"It is in his service," said Julia.

Marie said wisely: "That doesn't count. And often--I get frightened when he sometimes takes me out, and we dine at a restaurant. I look round and see the difference between most of the women there and me.

In restaurants one always seems to see such wonderful women--women who seem as if _their_ purpose was just being taken out to dinner and to be attractive. I compare my clothes with theirs and my hands with theirs; and I think: 'Supposing Osborn is comparing me, too?'"

"He wouldn't."

"Not consciously, perhaps. But he is admiring the other women all the time; I see him doing it. Why shouldn't he? All the women he sees about him in town--the pretty girls in the streets.... He used to admire me so much, when I was very pretty ... the--the things he used to say! But now, I sometimes wonder--"

"What else do you wonder, poor kid?"

"When he goes out alone--sometimes to dinner--in the evenings--"

"Whether he's taking someone--"

Marie nodded. "Someone prettier than I; as I used to be; someone who's not tired with having children; and who hasn't rusted and got dull and stupid from thinking of nothing but grocers' bills, and from staying at home."

"You must try not to think--"

"But I do think. Men are like that; men hate being annoyed and want to be amused. They get to--to--marriage is funny; Osborn seems to get to look upon me as someone who's always going to _ask_ for something. I--I know when he had a nice commission the other day, he didn't tell me about it, in case there was something for the children I'd be asking him for."

"Oh!"

"It hurts," said Marie, "always to be considered an asker; but of course men don't think of it like that."

"They ought to think, then."

"Men aren't like women. They set their own lines of conduct."

"What's that in the marriage service," Julia inquired, "about bestowing upon a woman all a man's worldly goods?"

"Ah, well, you think all those things at the time; but they don't work out, really."