“I didn’t give that definition of domestic life,” corrected Eugenia, with a faint smile, “that’s one of your fantasies.”

“Well, it’s true that you get life served up to you rather pell-mell, lots of it, take-it-as-it-comes,” admitted Marise, “but for a gross nature like mine, once you’ve had that, you’re lost.  You know you’d starve to death on the delicate slice of toasted bread served on old china.  You give up and fairly enjoy wallowing in the trough.”

She had been struck by that unwonted look of fatigue on Eugenia’s face, had tried to make her laugh, and now, with an effort, laughed with her.  She had forgotten her passing notion that Eugenia had something special to say.  What could she have?  They had gone over that astonishing misconception of hers about the Powers woodlot, and she had quite made Marise understand how hopelessly incapable she was of distinguishing one business detail from another.  There could be nothing else that Eugenia could wish to say.

“How in the world shall I get through the winter?” Eugenia now wondered aloud.  “Biskra and the Sahara perhaps . . . if I could only get away from the hideous band of tourists.  They say there are swarms of war-profiteers from Italy now, everywhere, low-class people with money for the first time.”  She added with a greater accent of wonder, “How in the world are you going to get through the winter?”

Marise was struck into momentary silence by the oddness of the idea.  There were phrases in Eugenia’s language which were literally non-translatable into hers, representing as they did ideas that did not exist there.  “Oh, we never have to consider that,” she answered, not finding a more accurate phrase.  “There won’t be time enough to do all we’ll try to do, all we’ll have to do.  There’s living.  That takes a lot of time and energy.  And I’ll have the chorus as usual.  I’m going to try some Mendelssohn this year.  The young people who have been singing for five or six years are quite capable of the ‘Elijah.’  And then any of the valley children who really want to, come to me for lessons, you know.  The people in North Ashley have asked me to start a chorus there this year, too.  And in the mill, Neale has a plan to try to get the men to work out for themselves some standards of what concerns them especially, what a day’s work really is, at any given job, don’t you know.”

What an imbecile she was, she thought, to try to talk about such things to Eugenia, who could not, in the nature of things, understand what she was driving at.  But apparently Eugenia had found something understandable there, for she now said sharply, startled, “Won’t that mean less income for you?”

She did not say, “Even less,” but it was implied in the energy of her accent.

Marise hesitated, brought up short by the solidity of the intangible barrier between their two languages.  There were phrases in her own tongue which could not be translated into Eugenia’s, because they represented ideas not existing there.  She finally said vaguely, “Oh perhaps not.”