"Because, he's been positively--what do you call it?--dithyrambic about
you for the last three months."

"I laughed," Rose acknowledged; "in the wrong place of course."

The two older women exchanged glances.

"Do you suppose it's ever been done to him before," asked Frederica, "in
the last fifteen years, anyway?" And Violet solemnly shook her head.

"But why?" demanded Rose. "That's what I want to know. How can any one
help thinking he's ridiculous. Of course if you were alone on a desert
island with him like the Bab Ballad, I suppose you'd make the best of
him. But with any one else that was--real, you know, around ..."

Only a very high vacuum--this was the idea Rose seemed to be getting
at--might be expected, _faute de mieux_, to tolerate Bertie. So if you
found him tolerated seriously in a woman's life, you couldn't resist the
presumption that there was a vacuum there.

"Don't ask me about him," said Frederica. "He never would have anything
to do with me; said I was a classic type and they always bored him
stiff. But Violet, here ..."

"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