ee, dear,
Gertrude isn't greatly to blame. Suppose you had been born and brought
up like her, to believe beauty and brains and a certain gracious way of
life a family privilege, a class distinction. Don't you see how your
inbred worship of class and family would become in the end an intenser
form of worshipping yourself? Gertrude was taught to live exclusively,
from girlhood, in this disguised worship of her own perfections. We're
all egotists of course; but most of us are the common or garden variety,
and have an occasional suspicion that we're pretty selfish and
intolerant and vain. Gertrude has never suspected it. How could she? A
daughter of her house can do no wrong--and she is a daughter of her
house." I sighed.

"Unluckily, my power of unreserved admiration has bounds, and my tongue
and temper sometimes haven't. So our marriage dissolved in an acid bath
compounded of honest irritations and dishonest apologies. _I_ made the
dishonest apologies. To do Gertrude justice, she never apologized. She
knew the initial fault was mine. I shouldn't have joined a church whose
creed I couldn't repeat without a sensation of moral nausea. That's just
what I did when I married Gertrude. There was no deception on her side,
either. I knew her gods, and I knew she assumed that mine were the same
as hers, and that I was humbly entering the service of their dedicated
priestess. Well, I apostatized--to her frozen amazement. Then a crisis
came--insignificant enough.... Gertrude refused to call with me on the
bride of an old friend of mine, because she thought it a misalliance. He
had no right, she held, under her jealous gods, to bring a former
trained nurse home as his wife, and thrust her upon a society that would
never otherwise have received her.

"I was furious, and blasphemed her gods. I insisted she should either
accompany me, then and there, or I'd go myself and apologize for
her--yes, these are the words I used--her 'congenital lunacy.' She left
me like a statue walking, and went to her room."

"And you?" asked Susan.

"I made the call."

"Did you make the apology?"

"No; I couldn't."

"Naturally not," assented Miss Goucher.

"Oh, Ambo," protested Susan, "what a coward you are! Well, and then?"

"I returned to a wifeless house. From that hour until yesterday morning
there have been no explanations between Gertrude and me. Gertrude is
superb."

"I understand her less than ever," said Susan.

"I understand her quit