She thought:  “Poor boy!  How he likes the good things of life!  And how few of them he gets!  He oughtn’t to have married.”

She looked around her again, and saw, a little way across the floor, a gay woman in black.  Her hair and eyes were black, her complexion was white, her lips were red.  She had with her two men who worshipped.  Of her Marie said to herself: 

“She’s older than I, but she’s keeping her looks; her hands are not so nice as mine used to be, but now they’re far nicer.  She’s keeping herself young and gay; she sees to it that she’s pampered.  But if she had married a poor man, and had two babies, and had been obliged to do all the chores, I wonder....”

“What interests you, my dear?” Osborn asked.

She told him in a fitful, inarticulate way.  “I was looking at that woman over there, the one in black, with the diamond comb in her hair.  And—­and I was wondering—­in a way—­I can hardly explain—­what is really the best thing to do with one’s life.  She’s older than I—­a good deal older—­but see how smooth her face is.  She looks as if she could never do anything other than laugh.  And her hands—­see, she uses them to show them off—­aren’t they lovely?  But I was wondering, if she was in my shoes, how would she look?  What would she do if babies woke her up half a dozen times every night, so that when the morning came she was very tired?

“Tired, and yet she must get up and cook and sweep, and take the children out, and everything.  Would her face be smooth and would she laugh then?  I was wondering, too, whether she’d take the same trouble over her hair at six o’clock of a cold morning.  And, if she had my life, would men admire her so much?  Would they look at her as they are looking now?”

Osborn stared at his wife, half-amazed, half-frowning.

“One would think,” he said, “to hear you talk, that you weren’t happy; that you hadn’t all—­all—­all a woman in your position of life can have.”

She flushed quickly.  “Don’t think that!  I was just wondering about her, that’s all, as I used to wonder about the people we saw when you took me out to dinner in our engaged days.  Do you remember?  You used to laugh at me and call me the Eternal Question, and all kinds of silly things.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“No?  Well, it was a very long while ago.”

“It sounded as if you were envying her.”

“I was envying her.”

“Haven’t you all you want?” he said again in resentful surprise.

“I want to be awf’ly young again, and to have a smooth face and manicured hands, and lots of admiration.”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Osborn, regaining his good temper with an effort, “this wine has gone to your head.”

After he had presented this very satisfactory solution, both laughed; but while he laughed with relief at dismissing the question, she laughed only acquiescently and unconvinced, the laugh which should be called the Laugh of the Wise Wives.  It appeased him and it relieved her, as a groan relieves a person in pain.  She sipped her unaccustomed wine and looked around her with her wide eyes, which were far, far more widely opened now than in the days of her blind youth.