“What’s her name?”

“Roselle Dates, I think.”

Osborn looked at his wife solicitously.

“I’m afraid you’re a bit tired, dear; you’re getting pale.  You had a jolly colour when I met you.”

She touched her cheeks mechanically with her fingertips.

“Had I?  That was because I was so excited at the prospect of our lovely evening.”

“Dear old girl!  So it’s been a lovely evening?”

“Perfect.  I wish it was beginning all over again,” she answered hollowly, wishing that she meant what she said.

What was the matter with her?  Why did she feel so grey, so plain, so sparkless?

“I ought to rouge a little,” she said.  “Everyone else does.”

He protested quickly and strongly.

“But,” she said, “if I’m tired?  If I’m a fright?  What then?”

“I shouldn’t like my wife to make up.”

“But, Osborn, I want you to think I’m pretty, well turned out, smart, like all the other women here.”

She waved a hand vaguely around, but her look was on the raven woman, on whose face the white cosmetic, exquisitely applied, was like pale rose petals.

“I do think you’re pretty.  As for your turn-out—­” he glanced over it quickly—­“it’s all right, isn’t it?  It’s what we can afford, anyway.  We can’t help it, can we?”

She shook her head.  “I’ve had no new clothes since we were married,” she murmured suddenly in a voice of yearning.

“Well,” said Osborn after a pause, “you had such lots; such a big trousseau, hadn’t you?  It’s supposed to last some while.”

“It’s lasted!” Her laugh rang out with a curious merriment; her eyes were downcast so that he could not see the tears in them, but something about his wife touched him profoundly.

He exclaimed, with rejuvenated sentiment:  “You know I’d always give you everything I could!  You know it isn’t because I won’t that I don’t give you the most wonderful clothes in town, so that you could beat every other woman hollow.”

His sentiment flushed her cheeks and cleared the mist from her eyes.  She asked, half shyly and coquettishly: 

“Do you think I should?”

“Of course you would, little girl.  You’re charming; anything more unlike the mother of two great kids I never saw.”

“Ah,” she said slowly, “but you forget to tell me.”

“What?”

“All those—­dear little—­things.”

“Women are rum,” he declared.  “I believe they’re always wanting their husbands to propose to them.”

“It would be nice,” she said seriously.

Osborn laughed a good deal.  “A woman’s never tired of love-making.”

“A married woman doesn’t often get the chance.”

“A married man doesn’t often get the time.”

She looked yet again at the actress across the room, and strange echoes of questions stirred in her.  Such a woman, she thought, would always make a man find time.  How did they do it?  What was the real secret of feminine victory, triumphant and deathless?  Was it not to keep burning always, night and day, winter and summer, autumn and spring, throughout the seasons, the clear-flamed lamp of romance?