"Why," she said, "whenever I hear a woman miaouling about being misunderstood, I always want to tell her she doesn't know her luck. Wait till she marries a man who really does understand--too well. Let her see how she likes it, whenever she turns loose and gets--going a little, to have him look interested, as if he were taking notes, and begin asking questions that are--a little too intelligent. How does she think it'll feel never to know, _never_--I mean that, that she isn't being--experimented on!"
It was a rather horrible idea, Frederica didn't try to deny it. But not being understood wasn't very agreeable either. What did they want then?
Eleanor laughed. "Did you ever think," she asked, "that one of these regular stage husbands would be rather satisfactory? Terribly particular, you know, and bossy and domineering. The kind that discovers a letter or a handkerchief or sees you going into some other man's 'rooms' and gets frightfully jealous, and denounces you without giving you a chance to explain, and drags you round by the hair and threatens to kill you? And then discovers--in the last act, you know,--that you were perfectly innocent all the while, and repents all over the place and begs you to forgive him and take him back; and you do? Do you suppose any of the men we know would be capable of acting like that? Don't you think we'd like it if they were? Not if they really did those things, perhaps, but if we thought they might?"
Frederica was amused, but didn't think there was much to that. Of course, if the play was very thrilling, and you liked the leading man, you might build yourself into the romance somehow. But when it came to the real thing ...
"No, there is something in it," Eleanor insisted. "There's something you can't get in any other way. Whom do you think I'd pick," she asked suddenly, "for the happiest wife I know? Edith Welles. Yes, really. Oh, I know, her husband's a slacker and no real good to anybody. And he goes out every now and then and drinks too much and doesn't know just what happens afterward. But he always comes back and wants to be forgiven. And he thinks she's an angel,--which she is--and he thinks he isn't worthy to put on her rubbers--which he isn't, and--well, there you are! She knows she's _got_ him, somehow.