Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/34

Rh she stops short at that. Yes—yes, L'Ingénue will marry you that she may read Zola and Belot; that she may go to La Biche au Bois; that she may smoke cigars with young men; that she may have her dresses cut half-way down her spine; that she may romp like a half drunk harlot in all the cotillons of the year! Whereas your woman of the world, if well chosen"

"Will have done all these things beforehand at some one else's expense, and will have tired of them,—or not have tired; of the display of spine and of the cotillon she will certainly never have tired unless she be fifty"

"That is not precisely what I mean," said the Duc, caressing his small white moustache. "No; I said well chosen—well chosen. What it can matter to you whether your wife smokes with young men, or reads bad novels, or romps till breakfast, I do not see myself. There is a natural destiny for husbands. The unwise fret over it—the wise profit by it. But considering that you dislike these things in your own wife, however much you like and admire them in the