the
pathos.

"Oh, I didn't mean that," she cried. "Exile is--is exile." She flushed.
After a few moments of hesitation she named at random a state the laws
of which required a six months' residence. She contemplated him. "I
hardly dare to ask you to give me the name of some reputable lawyer out
there."

He had looked for an instant into her eyes. Men of the law are not
invulnerable, particularly at Mr. Wentworth's age, and New England
consciences to the contrary notwithstanding. In spite of himself, her
eyes had made him a partisan: an accomplice, he told himself afterwards.

"Really, Mrs. Spence," he began, and caught another appealing look. He
remembered the husband now, and a lecture on finance in the Grenfell
smoking room which Howard Spence had delivered, and which had grated
on Boston sensibility. "It is only right to tell you that our firm does
not--does not--take divorce cases--as a rule. Not that we are taking
this one," he added hurriedly. "But as a friend--"

"Oh, thank you!" said Honora.

"Merely as a friend who would be glad to do you a service," he
continued, "I will, during the day, try to get you the name of--of as
reputable a lawyer as possible in that place."

And Mr. Wentworth paused, as red as though he had asked her to marry
him.

"How good of you!" she cried. "I shall be at the Touraine until this
evening."

He escorted her through the corridor, bowed her into the elevator, and
her spirits had risen perceptibly as she got into her cab and returned
to the hotel. There, she studied railroad folders. One confidant was
enough, and she dared not even ask the head porter the way to a locality
where--it was well known--divorces were sold across a counter. And as
she worked over the intricacies of this problem the word her husband
had applied to her action recurred to her--precipitate. No doubt Mr.
Wentworth, too, had thought her precipitate. Nearly every important act
of her life had been precipitate. But she was conscious in this instance
of no regret. Delay, she felt, would have killed her. Let her exile
begin at once.

She had scarcely finished luncheon when Mr. Wentworth was announced. For
reasons best known to himself he had come in person; and he handed her,
written on a card, the name of the Honourable David Beckwith.

"I'll have to confess I don't know much about him, Mrs. Spence," he
said, "except that he has been in Congress, and is one of the prominent
lawyers of that state."