“Is that what’s the matter with Rodney?” he asked.  “Is this sort of”—­a gesture with his head took in the table—­“caramel diet, beginning to go against his teeth?”

“He had to work to-night,” Rose said.  “He was awfully sorry he couldn’t come.”

She smiled just a little ironically as she said it, and exaggerated by a hair’s breadth, perhaps, the purely conventional nature of the reply.

“Yes,” he observed, “that’s what we say.  Sometimes it gets us off and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Well, it got him off to-night,” she said.  “He was pretty impressive.  He said there was a ruling decision against him and he had to make some sort of distinction so that the decision wouldn’t rule.  Do you know what that means?  I don’t.”

“Why didn’t you ask him?” Randolph wanted to know.

“I did and he said he could explain it, but that it would take a month.  So of course there wasn’t time.”

“I thought,” said Randolph, “that he used to talk law to you by the hour.”

The button wasn’t on the foil that time, because the thrust brought blood—­a bright flush into her cheeks and a sudden brightness into her eyes that would have induced him to relent if she hadn’t followed the thing up of her own accord.

“I wish you’d tell me something,” she said.  “I expect you know better than any one else I could ask.  Why is it that husbands and wives can’t talk to each other?  With people who live the way we do, it isn’t that they’ve worn each other out, because they see no more of each other, hardly, than they do of the others.  And it isn’t that they’re naturally more uninteresting to each other than the rest of the people they know.  Because then, why did they marry each other in the first place, instead of any one of the others who are so easy to talk to afterward?  Imagine what this table would be if the husbands and wives sat side by side!  Would Eleanor ever be able to turn it so that they talked that way?”

“That’s a fascinating speculation,” he said.  “I wish I could persuade her some time to indulge the wild eccentricity of trying it out.”

“Well, why?” she demanded.

“Shall I try to say something witty,” he asked, “or do you want it, as near as may be, absolutely straight?”

“Let’s indulge,” she said, “in the wild, eccentricity of talking straight.”

The cigarettes came around just then, and he lighted one rather deliberately, at one of the candles, before he answered.

“I am under the impression,” he said, “that husbands and wives can talk exactly as well as any other two people.  Exactly as well, and no better.  The necessary conditions for real conversation are a real interest in and knowledge of a common subject; ability on the part of both to contribute something to that subject.  Well, if a husband and wife can meet those terms, they can talk.  But the joker is, as our legislative friend over there would say,” (he nodded down the table toward a young millionaire of altruistic principles, who had got elected to the state assembly) “the joker is that a man and a woman who aren’t married, and who are moderately attracted to each other, can talk, or seem to talk, without meeting those conditions.”