Nor to give up her new power.  In those divisions of the bourgeoisie where the wife is always the husband’s partner, following a custom of centuries, and who to-day is merely carrying on the business alone, there will be no surrender of responsibilities grown precious, no sense of apprehension of loss of personal power.  But in those more leisured circles where, for instance, a woman has been for the first time complete mistress of all expenditures, domestic or administrative, and of her childrens’ destinies; has learned to think and act for herself as if she were widowed in fact; and in addition has cultivated her social sense to an extreme unprecedented in the entire history of the bourgeoisie, she will never return to the old status, even though she disdain feminism per se and continue to prefer her husband to other men—­that is to say, to find him more tolerable.

A young woman of this class, who until the war widowed her had been as happy as she was favored by fortune:  wealthy, well-bred, brilliantly educated, and “elle et lui” with her husband, told me that no American could understand the peculiarly intensive life led by a French couple who found happiness in each other and avoided the fast sets.  And whereas what she told me would have seemed natural enough in the life of a petite bourgeoisie, I must confess I was amazed to have it from the lips of a clever and beautiful young woman whom life had pampered until death broke loose in Europe.

The husband, she told me, did the thinking.  Before he left home in the morning he asked his wife what she intended to order for dinner and altered the menu to his liking; also the list of guests, if it had been thought well to vary their charming routine with a select company.

Before his wife bought a new gown she submitted the style and colors to what seems literally to have been her other half, and he solemnly pondered over both before pronouncing his august and final opinion.

If they had children, the interest was naturally extended.  His concern in health and in illness, in play and in study, was nothing short of meticulous.  I asked my informant if Frenchwomen would ever again submit to a man’s making such an infernal nuisance of himself, and, sad as she still was at her own great loss, she replied positively that they would not.  They had tasted independence and liked it too well ever to drop back into insignificance.

“Nor,” she added, “will we be content with merely social and domestic life in the future.  We will love our home life none the less, but we must always work at something now; only those who have lost their health, or are natural parasites will ever again be content to live without some vital personal interest outside the family.”

Words of tremendous import to France, those.

VII