re rich
enough, and sometimes they were high enough placed and far enough
derived. But there was nearly always a leak in them, a social leak
somewhere, on one side or the other. They could not be said to be
persons of quality in the highest sense.

"Why, persons of quality seldom can be," the bachelor contended.

The girl opposite, who had been invited to balance him in the scale of
celibacy by the hostess in her study of her dinner-party, first
smiled, and then alleged a very distinguished instance of divorce in
which the parties were both of immaculate origin and unimpeachable
fashion. "Nobody," she said, "can accuse _them_ of a want of quality."
She was good-looking, though no longer so young as she could have
wished; she flung out her answer to the bachelor defiantly, but she
addressed it to the host, and he said that was true; certainly it was
a signal case; but wasn't it exceptional? The others mentioned like
cases, though none quite so perfect, and then there was a lull till
the husband on the left of the hostess noted a fact which renewed the
life of the discussion.

"There was a good deal of agitation, six or eight years ago, about it.
I don't know whether the agitation accomplished anything."

The host believed it had influenced legislation.

"For or against?" the bachelor inquired.

"Oh, against."

"But in other countries it's been coming in more and more. It seems to
be as easy in England now as it used to be in Indiana. In France it's
nothing scandalous, and in Norwegian society you meet so many
disunited couples in a state of quadruplicate reunion that it is very
embarrassing. It doesn't seem to bother the parties to the new
relation themselves."

"It's very common in Germany, too," the husband on the right of the
hostess said.

The husband on her left side said he did not know just how it was in
Italy and Spain, and no one offered to disperse his ignorance.

In the silence which ensued the lady on the left of the host created a
diversion in her favor by saying that she had heard they had a very
good law in Switzerland.

Being asked to tell what it was, she could not remember, but her
husband, on the right of the hostess, saved the credit of his family
by supplying her defect. "Oh, yes. It's very curious. We heard of it
when we were there. When people want to be put asunder, for any reason
or other, they go before a magistrate and declare their wish. Then
they go home, and at the end of a ce