"Where did you get that dress?" he demanded.
She heard simply the question. Her thoughts were on the events of the evening at the club. "Had it made here," said she, unconscious of his mood. "It’s something like one I saw in a fashion picture from Paris. Like it?"
To her amazement he replied angrily: "I do not. I’ve never seen a dress I disapproved of so thoroughly. Don’t wear it again, and please be careful how you adopt a fashion you get that way. French fashions are set by a class of women I couldn’t speak to you about. Respectable women have to alter them greatly."
"Why, what’s the matter with the dress?" exclaimed she. "Everyone admired it at the club."
"It isn’t decent," replied he. "I know you are so innocent that you don’t think of those things. But it’s my duty to protect you. I won’t have men commenting on my wife’s person."
"But, Dick," protested she, "this isn’t a low-cut dress. It’s higher than those I usually wear. It has bands across the shoulders and a real back——"
"Then change all your dresses. You must not make yourself conspicuous."
"Conspicuous! The other women wear much lower-cut dresses than I do."
"I know about such things," said he peremptorily. "I don’t believe in low-neck dresses anyhow. What business has a good woman flaunting her charms—rousing in other men thoughts she ought to rouse in her husband only?"
"Don’t you think it’s all a matter of custom?" she said persuasively. She was not convinced, or even shaken. But she admired the shrewdness of his argument. The reason she had never grown to dislike him was that even in his prejudices he was always plausible, and not in his narrowest narrowness was he ever petty. "Now really, Dick, if that were carried out logically, a woman’d have to cover her face and not speak, for often it’s a woman’s voice that charms a man"—with a little laugh—"and once in a long while what she says."
"I would carry it out logically," replied he promptly, "if I had my way. That reminds me. You’re away from home very often these days, I notice. You’re over at the club a great deal."
"The weather’s been so fine, everybody goes."
"I’ve no objection to your going occasionally. But after all the place for a good woman is at home."