Lady Stutfield Yes; men’s good temper shows they are not so sensitive as we are, not so finely strung. It makes a great barrier often between husband and wife, does it not? But I would so much like to know what was the wrong thing Mr Allonby did.

Mrs Allonby Well, I will tell you, if you solemnly promise to tell everybody else.

Lady Stutfield Thank you, thank you. I will make a point of repeating it.

Mrs Allonby When Ernest and I were engaged, he swore to me positively on his knees that he had never loved anyone before in the whole course of his life. I was very young at the time, so I didn’t believe him, I needn’t tell you. Unfortunately, however, I made no inquiries of any kind till after I had been actually married four or five months. I found out then that what he had told me was perfectly true. And that sort of thing makes a man so absolutely uninteresting.

Lady Hunstanton My dear!

Mrs Allonby Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man’s last romance.

Lady Stutfield I see what you mean. It’s very, very beautiful.

Lady Hunstanton My dear child, you don’t mean to tell me that you won’t forgive your husband because he never loved anyone else? Did you ever hear such a thing, Caroline? I am quite surprised.

Lady Caroline Oh, women have become so highly educated, Jane, that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages. They apparently are getting remarkably rare.

Mrs Allonby Oh, they’re quite out of date.

Lady Stutfield Except amongst the middle classes,° I have been told.

Mrs Allonby How like the middle classes!

Lady Stutfield Yes—is it not?—very, very like them.

Lady Caroline If what you tell us about the middle classes is true, Lady Stutfield, it redounds greatly to their credit. It is much to be regretted that in our rank of life the wife should be so persistently frivolous, under the impression apparently that it is the proper thing to be. It is to that I attribute the unhappiness of so many marriages we all know of in society.

Mrs Allonby Do you know, Lady Caroline, I don’t think the frivolity of the wife has ever anything to do with it. More marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being?

Lady Hunstanton My dear!

Mrs Allonby Man, poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man belongs to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years. He can’t help himself. It is in his race. The History of Woman is very different. We have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the first.

Lady Stutfield Yes, the common sense of husbands is certainly most, most trying. Do tell me your conception of the Ideal Husband. I think it would be so very, very helpful.

Mrs Allonby The Ideal Husband? There couldn’t be such a thing. The institution is wrong.