, smiling.

"Oh, Chartie," she said, "we aren't in the 'dark backward' of the
Victorian era! Why shouldn't he be free to live his life as he wants to,
as well as I?"

"That's downright irreligious, Sophy!" cried her sister with passion.

"I don't think so," said Sophy mildly.

The Judge intervened.

"Come," he said nervously, "don't let's squabble over side-issues."

"'Side-issues'! _Joe!_" exclaimed his wife.

"Oh, well ... don't let's squabble, at any rate," he said huntedly. "The
main point, what we're here to discuss, is Sophy's wish to be divorced."

"And I think she's perfectly justified!" snapped Charlotte.

The Judge resumed, addressing Sophy:

"Now, the question is, what will be ... er ... Mr. Loring's attitude in
the matter?"

"I think he'll oppose it ... at first," said Sophy.

The Judge looked curious.

"Why only 'at first'?" he asked.

Sophy said quietly and rather sadly:

"Because it isn't in his nature to keep up anything for long."

"Mh!" said the Judge.

He took up the paper-weight which he had laid aside and turned it so
vigorously that the little cottage and figures within the glass-ball
were almost blotted from sight by the mimic snowstorm.

"Divorce is a slow affair in Virginia," he said at last.

"Then I'd rather get mine in the West," said Sophy.

Charlotte looked at her in horror.

"Oh, Sophy!" she cried. "No! ... you _wouldn't_!... It's ... it's so
_vulgar_!"

"Life is vulgar," said Sophy.

"Oh, my _dear_!"

"I mean it in the big sense. Vulgar means common to all--to all people.
So I say life is vulgar ... and the longing for freedom is vulgar. No
one has ever longed for freedom as slaves have, I suppose. Well, I am a
slave ... and I long for freedom. I long for it so that I want it
quickly. I want it as one wants water when one's famishing, and bread
when one's starving. I'm not so aristocratic in my hunger and thirst
that I prefer to wait through dignified years for a bit of stale bread.
I want my loaf _now_ ... and I want the whole loaf ... not half...."

Sophy was indeed speaking with "vulgar" intensity. She "let herself go"
because she wanted Joe and Charlotte to understand once for all that
there was no use in trying to make her behave "reasonably."

Charlotte's small mouth was tight shut. The Judge looked rather pale.
Just as he had thought, Sophy was evincing rashness in its most
aggravated form.

XXXVIII

Sophy slipped down from her perch on