This was not only brutal; it seemed irrelevant.

"Wilfred Lennox--" I tried to insist, but she commandingly raised the
new cigarette at me.

"Yes, sir! Ever know one of 'em married for as long as ten years that
didn't in her secret heart have a sort of contempt for her life partner
as being a stuffy, plodding truck horse? Of course they keep a certain
dull respect for him as a provider, but they can't see him as dashing
and romantic any more; he ain't daring and adventurous. All he ever does
is go down and open up the store or push back the roll-top, and keep
from getting run over on the street. One day's like another with him,
never having any wild, lawless instincts or reckless moods that make a
man fascinating--about the nearest he ever comes to adventure is when he
opens the bills the first of the month. And she often seeing him without
any collar on, and needing a shave mebbe, and cherishing her own secret
romantic dreams, while like as not he's prosily figuring out how he's
going to make the next payment on the endowment policy.

"It's a hard, tiresome life women lead, chained to these here plodders.
That's why rich widows generally pick out the dashing young devils they
do for their second, having buried the man that made it for 'em. Oh,
they like him well enough, call him 'Father' real tenderly, and see
that he changes to the heavy flannels on time, but he don't ever thrill
them, and when they order three hundred and fifty dollars' worth of duds
from the Boston Cash Emporium and dress up like a foreign countess, they
don't do it for Father, they do it for the romantic guy in the magazine
serial they're reading, the handsome, cynical adventurer that has such
an awful power over women. They know darned well they won't ever meet
him; still it's just as well to be ready in case he ever should make Red