“She has the serenest face, like still, shaded water.  I wonder how she would look in trouble?”

“It is not becoming to her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite.”

“Your way of life here seems so perfect!  No hurry nor worry—­nothing to make wrinkles.”

“You like this smooth Indian living, then?”

“Like it!  I hope you won’t think me wholly given over to love of things that perish in the using, but if I could live this sort of life with the one I liked best, heaven would be a superfluity.”

“It is heaven indeed when I think of the purgatory from which we came into it,” said Mr. Rayne, throwing away his cigar and carrying off my coffee-cup.

“Do you know anything of Mrs. Rayne’s history before her marriage?” I said to Frank as I joined him in his walk.

“Nothing to speak of—­only she was a widow.”

“Oh!” said I, feeling that a spot or two had suddenly appeared on the face of the sun.

“That’s nothing against her, is it?”

“No, but I have no patience with second marriages.”

“Nor first ones, either,” said Frank wickedly.

“But seriously, Frank—­would you like to have a wife so beautiful as Mrs. Rayne?”

“Yes, if she had Rhoda’s soul inside of her,” said Frank stoutly.

“I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because all sorts of eyes gloat on her beauty and drink it in, and in one way appropriate it to themselves.  Mr. Rayne is as proud of the admiration given to his wife as if it were a personal tribute to his own taste in selecting her.  A beautiful woman never really and truly belongs to her husband unless he can keep a veil over her face, as the Turks do.”

“I knew you had ‘views,’” said Mr. Rayne behind me, “but I had no idea they were so heathenish.  What is New England coming to under the new rule?  Are the plain women going to shut up all the handsome ones?”

“I was only supposing a case.”

“Suppositions are dangerous.  You first endure, then dally with them, and finally embrace them as established facts.”

“I was only saying that if I am a man when I come into the world next time (as the Hindoos say), I shall marry a plain woman with a charming disposition, and so, as it were, have my diamond all to myself by reason of its dull cover.”

“Jealousy, thy name is woman!” said Mr. Rayne.  “When the Woman’s Republic is set up, how I shall pity the handsome ones!”

“They will all be banished to some desert island,” said Frank.

“And draw all men after them, as the ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin’ did the rats,” said Mr. Rayne.

“What are you talking about?” said Mrs. Rayne, joining us at this point.

“The pity of it,” said her husband, “that beauty is only skin deep.”

“That is deep enough,” said Mrs. Rayne.

“Yes, if age and sickness and trouble did not make one shed it so soon,” said I ungratefully.