The Real Adventure

hes had taken the Allison McCreas' house, furnished, for a year, beginning in October, she spoke of it as an ideal arrangement. As everybo

perhaps-Jacobean, anyway-by a smart young society architect who wore soft collars and an uptwisted mustache, and who, by a perfectly reciprocal arrangement which almost

that the establishment presented the last politely spoken word in things as they ought to be. The period furniture was accurate almost to the minute, and the arrangement of it, the color

initely prescribed, just half the time. Every other year they went off around the world in one direction or another, and rented their house furnished for exactly enough to pay all their expenses. They had no children, and his business, which co

d his wife would be exactly right. Still, she didn't believe he could do better. They'd have to have some sort of place to live in, in the autumn. It would be such a mistake to buy a lot of stuff in a hurry and find out later

ime we rented the house, we put them in the lease. I wouldn't do that with you, of course, bu

, non-committally, dashed off to the last meeting of the Thursday Club (all this happened in June, j

ouse, he'd either go out and buy a plush Morris chair from feather-y

an unprejudiced opinion on, "simply because in this case my own isn't trustworthy. I'm so foolish about old Roddy, that I can't be sure I haven't-well, caught being mad about Rose from him. It all depends, you see, on whether Rose is going to be a hit this winter or not. If she is, they'll want a place just like

, but I think she's absolutely thrilling. She's so perfectly simple. She's never-don't you know-being anything. She just is. And she thinks we're all so wonderful-clever and witty and beaut

derica. "We've been shopping. Well then, I'm goin

see it, anyway, and asked if she liked it, a question in the nature of the case superfluous. One might as wel

thousand dollars was a half or a hundredth of her future husband's income. The new house was just a part-as so many of the other things that had happened to her since th

the autumn, encountered no resistance whatever. It was all, as Frederica had said, oiled. She was asked to make no effort. The whole thing just happened

at the prince's ball as beautiful as Cinderella, and other gowns, perhaps, as marvelous as the one provided by the fairy godmother. The godmother's greatest gift, I should say, though the fable lays little stress on it, was a capacity for unalloyed

e affectation is always transparently clear to other women and they detest her for it. But it was

ng women supposed to combine and reconcile social and intellectual brilliancy on even terms. They met at one another's houses and read scintillating papers about nothing whatever under titles selected generally from Through the Looking-glass or The H

arvelous supper dances afterward, that had this thrilling quality of incredibility to Rose

er undergone. And it was also true that her mother, and for that matter, Portia herself had spoiled her a lot-had run about doing little things for her, come in and

p in the woods. The whole mechanism of ringing bells for people, telling them, quite courteously of course, but with no spare words, precisely what she wanted them to do and seeing them, with no words at all of their own, exc

e scheduled for that morning had been moved, she went on to explain, and Eleanor Randolph was feeling seedy and

said with concern. "Can't

elf. You've no idea how new it is, or how exciting all the little things about it are. State Street's so different now-going and getting the exact thing I want, instead of finding something I can make do, and then faking it

k, and what kind of shoes I'd have to wear. And coming home in time for dinner always meant the rush hour, and I'd have to stand. And it

betrayed the fact. This smile, plainly enough, went rather below the surface, carried a referenc

a quarter to eleven and to tell Otto exactly where I want him to drive me to. I always feel as

her how long she thought this bli

er," s

of it new to you," she said-"not the silly little things I've been talking about, nor the things we do together-oh,

see you shine"-he got out of his bed, sat down on the edge of hers, and took both her hands-"so long as it's like that

arling. But, after a moment's silence, a little frown puckere

ll, he felt the impact, away down in the inner depths of him, of a realization that he was not the same man he had been six months ago. Not the man who had tramped impatiently back and forth across Frederica's drawing-room, expounding his ideals of space and leisure-open, wind-swept space, for the free range of a har

joyment of a sort of clairvoyant limpidity, had been wont to challenge its stiffest problems, wrestle with them, and whether t

hat he hadn't resisted the change, hadn't wanted to resist, didn't want to now, as he sat there looking down at her-at the wonderful hair

himself, that it was enough to make anybody solemn to look at her. And then, to break the spell, he asked

to yesterday, with somebody-well, with Bertram Willis, by s

y perhaps, among young married women whose respectability and social position were alike beyond cavil. He never carried anything too far, you see. He was no pirate-a sort, rather, of licensed privateer. And what made him so invincibly attractive-after you had granted his other qualities, that is-was that he professed himself, among women, exceedingly difficult to please, so that attentions from him, even o

tteau group he was getting up for the charity ball (the ball was to be a sumptuously picturesque affair that year), nor that he had been spendi

t the conversation the two of them ha

hould regard the thing herself; whether she ought to have been annoyed, or seriously remonstrant, or whether the s

to its proper scale. Married to a man who could look at her like that, she needn't take a

-well, everybody knows he's that way to everybody. 'Flower face' was one of his favorites, but there were others that were worse. Well, yesterday he brought around some old costume plates, but he wouldn't let me look at t

, "that he ever let obstacle

s too late because of my being married to you. He meant too late because of him. He couldn

ad and sympathetic, I had to go and grin, and he wanted to know why,

h named Robert?-and he went perfectly purple with rage and said I was a savage. And then he got madder still and said he'd like to be a savage himself for about five mi

isode looked to him, as it had looked to her, trivial. Then, with a contented little sigh

ave been," she said, "if either

Bertram Willis seriously; or if she had married a man