She knew a few people of exactly the right sort and she neatly and almost painlessly detached her husband from his old Lake View associations.  She looked out a house in precisely the right neighborhood, and furnished it to combine the splendor of her income with the simple austerity of his profession in just the right proportions.  She trailed her game with unfailing precision, never barked up the wrong tree, could distinguish a goat from a sheep as far as she could see one, and in no time at all had won the exact position she wanted.

Her attitude toward her husband (you have already had a sample of it at Frederica’s famous dinner, where Rodney was supposed to take the preliminary steps toward marrying Hermione Woodruff) attracted general admiration, and it was fortified, of course, by the story of their romantic marriage.  It was conceded she had done a very fine and splendid thing in marrying the man she loved, settling down to live with him on so comparatively simple and modest a scale, and devoting herself so whole-heartedly to his career.  She had an air—­and it wasn’t consciously assumed, either—­of living wholly with reference to him, which people found exceedingly engaging. (A cynic might observe at this point that the same quality in a homely unattractive woman would fail of producing this effect.)

Indeed, he had much to be grateful for.  But for the fact that his wife was accepted without reserve, a man whose principal preoccupation was with matters of sex psychology, who was said to cure hysterical and neurasthenic patients by the interpretation of their dreams, would have been regarded askance by the average run of common-sense, golf-playing men of affairs.  Even his most miraculous cures would be attributed to the imaginary nature of the disease, rather than to the skill of the physician.

Not even his wife’s undeniable charm could altogether efface this impression from the mind of this sort of man.  But though his way of turning the theme of a smoking-room story into a subject for serious scientific discussion might make you uncomfortable, you couldn’t meet James Randolph and hear him talk, without respecting him.  He was attractive to women (it amounted almost to fascination with the neurotic type), and to men of high intelligence, like Rodney, he was a boon and a delight.  And the people who liked him least were precisely those most attracted by his wife.  Anyhow, no one refused an invitation to their dinners.

Rose’s arrival at this one—­a little late, to be sure, but not scandalously—­created a mild sensation.  None of the other guests were strangers, either, on whom she could have the effect of novelty.  They were the same crowd, pretty much, who had been encountering one another all winter—­dancing, dining and talking themselves into a state of complete satiety with one another.  They’d split up pretty soon and branch out in different directions—­the Florida east coast, California, Virginia Hot Springs and so on, and so galvanize their interest in life and in one another.  At present they were approaching the lowest ebb.