marry you I had to suffer from your selfish,
self-centred, demonstrative, and rather common
character--until you finally learned that demonstration is
offensive to decent breeding, and that, although I happened
to be married to you, I intended to keep to my own notions
of delicacy, reserve, privacy, and self-respect.

"Of course you thought it a sufficient reason for us to have
children merely because _you_ once thought you wanted them;
and I shall not forget what was your brutal attitude toward
me when I told you very plainly that I refused to be saddled
with the nasty, grubby little brats. Evidently you are
incapable of understanding any woman who is not half animal.

"I did not desire children, and that ought to have been
sufficient for you. I am not demonstrative toward anybody; I
leave that custom to my servants. And is it any crime if the
things that interest and appeal to you do not happen to
attract me?

"And I'll tell you now that your subjects of conversation
always bored me. I make no pretences; I frankly do not care
for what you so smugly designate as 'the things of the mind'
and 'things worth while.' I am no hypocrite: I like well
bred, well dressed people; I like what they do and say and
think. Their characters may be negative as you say, but
their poise and freedom from demonstration are most
agreeable to me.

"You politely designated them as fools, and what they said
you characterised as piffle. You had the exceedingly bad
taste to sneer at various members of an ancient and
established aristocracy--people who by inheritance from
generations of social authority, require no toleration from
such a man as you.

"These are the people who are my friends; among whom I enjoy
an established position. This position you now threaten by
coolly going into business in New York. In other and uglier
words you advertise to the world that you have abandoned
your home and wife.

"Of course I cannot help it if you insist on doing this
common and disgraceful thing.

"And I suppose, considering the reigning family's attitude
toward divorce, that you believe me to be at your mercy.

"Permit me to inform you that I am not. If, in a certain
set, wherein I now have the entree, divorce is not
tolerated,--at any rate where the divorced wife of an
A