vast refuge of the
homeless, the modern hotel, where she sat until the small hours looking
down upon the myriad lights of the shore front, and out beyond them on
the black waters of an inland sea.

.......................

From Newport to Salomon City, in a state not far from the Pacific tier,
is something of a transition in less than a week, though in modern life
we should be surprised at nothing. Limited trains are wonderful enough;
but what shall be said of the modern mind, that travels faster than
light? and much too fast for the pages of a chronicle. Martha Washington
and the good ladies of her acquaintance knew nothing about the upper
waters of the Missouri, and the words "for better, for worse, for
richer, for poorer" were not merely literature to them.

'Nous avons change tout cela', although there are yet certain crudities
to be eliminated. In these enlightened times, if in one week a lady is
not entirely at home with husband number one, in the next week she
may have travelled in comparative comfort some two-thirds across a
continent, and be on the highroad to husband number two. Why travel?
Why have to put up with all this useless expense and worry and waste
of time? Why not have one's divorce sent, C.O.D., to one's door,
or establish a new branch of the Post-office Department? American
enterprise has surely lagged in this.

Seated in a plush-covered rocking-chair that rocked on a track of its
own, and thus saved the yellow-and-red hotel carpet, the Honourable
Dave Beckwith patiently explained the vexatious process demanded by his
particular sovereign state before she should consent to cut the Gordian
knot of marriage. And his state--the Honourable Dave remarked--was in
the very forefront of enlightenment in this respect: practically all
that she demanded was that ladies in Mrs. Spence's predicament should
become, pro tempore, her citizens. Married misery did not exist in the
Honourable Dave's state, amongst her own bona fide citizens. And, by a
wise provision in the Constitution of our glorious American Union, no
one state could tie the nuptial knot so tight that another state could
not cut it at a blow.

Six months' residence, and a whole year before the divorce could be
granted! Honora looked at the plush rocking-chair, the yellow-and-red
carpet, the inevitable ice-water on the marble-topped table, and the
picture of a lady the shape of a liqueur bottle playing tennis in the
late eighties, and